An entertaining but sluggish saga.
Old Hollywood liberates a transgender woman in this historical adventure.
Short of stature, slight of frame, delicate of face, and lilting of voice, Joey Elliot, a 22-year-old man living in Glendale, California in 1935, often gets bullied, even by his own father. Seduced by a gay lothario, he moves to Los Angeles where he works at a flower shop and becomes a fixture at gay orgies. He escapes this rut when he delivers flowers one day to the head of Crown Pictures, where he startles everyone with his uncanny resemblance to Lana Montague, a starlet who became pregnant and quit the industry without finishing her debut film. Joey saves the production by redoing some of Lana’s scenes. Indeed, he does this so convincingly that he’s signed to a contract as actress “Claire Rambeau” and fed into the studio’s star-making machinery, complete with glamorous makeup, hair weaves, and lessons in womanly deportment. Reveling in “dresses swishing and heels clicking” and the appreciative attentions of straight men, Claire realizes that she’s really a woman and proceeds with hormone treatments. Overshadowing her transformation, however, is her fear that her secret will be exposed to the public—and to Jeffrey Alexander, the man with whom she’s fallen in love. As Bishop’s (Friends, 2018, etc.) giddy novel celebrates Hollywood’s power to turn dreams into reality, it often feels like a transgender version of Singin’ in the Rain, with piquant scenes of moviemaking procedure from costume-fitting to the staging of fake dates for publicity photos, all played out in screwball repartee (Jeffrey: “We have a connection of some kind and I want to explore it….Like Stanley and Livingstone!” Claire: “So I’m Africa, now?”). Unfortunately, Claire is a domineering but bland heroine who’s effortlessly good at everything, and the overstuffed, overcomplicated narrative fixates on talky scenes of her getting makeovers, shopping, and discussing contract minutiae. The supporting cast exists mostly to marvel at Claire’s beauty and talent, and to dry her tears. There are a few intriguing characters, though, including a hard-boiled studio fixer, and also scenes of real drama and pathos, as when Claire’s mother confronts the changes in her child’s life.
An entertaining but sluggish saga.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 758
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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