Gritty and fun, with a surprisingly rewarding finish, this dark comedy entertains throughout.
A bumbling, Canadian ne’er-do-well painfully learns to find his way in Meade’s debut novel.
After years of aimless living punctuated only by occasional run-ins with the law, limo driver Marty Drysdale meets the girl of his dreams when she pulls him over for speeding. Opposites attract as Marty finds himself irresistibly drawn to Chick, a steely, crimson-haired Mountie with a “cold, clear face and blue eyes that looked right through you,” and Chick eventually falls for Marty’s ambitionless, down-to-earth demeanor and agrees to marry him. Not long after joining households, however, their innate differences drive the two apart, and Chick leaves their native Calgary after learning Marty can’t father a child. Years later, Chick, no longer a Mountie, limps back to town unannounced, sporting a prosthetic leg, a young daughter, Susan, and a new husband, John “FitZ” Fitzgerald, the scheming partner Marty had first introduced her to while Marty and Chick were still married. Chick’s return shifts this heavily plot-driven narrative into overdrive, when Marty again takes up with FitZ, and FitZ clandestinely concocts the hair-brained scheme that Marty will write a screenplay based on robberies found in Chick’s old case files. Trouble ensues when FitZ enlists the backing of some big-league thugs he plans to simply defraud, and then he coerces Marty into re-enacting the old robberies with him—hence the work’s title—with results not unlike those in a Coen brothers’ film. Though there are humorous moments—particularly as Marty and FitZ practically kill themselves during their hijinks—by story’s end, Meade’s plot grows increasingly convoluted and threatens to dwarf the compelling character development at the heart of the tale. In a refreshing twist, young Susan helps spark a redemptive softening of Marty’s wizened heart and exposes the work’s theme in describing the kinds of movies she likes—namely those where “the alien turns into a different being to trick you…but you know that underneath it is still the same alien coming to get you.”
Gritty and fun, with a surprisingly rewarding finish, this dark comedy entertains throughout.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2009
ISBN: 978-0595635702
Page Count: 244
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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