The Los Angeles-based Lange, a local TV news anchor, drops more names than clues in a first thriller that rarely feels like more than a paint-by-numbers exercise. The title character is Devin Bradshaw, a 34-year-old former womenswear designer who gave up her burgeoning career when she snagged wealthy Paul Bradshaw away from his first wife. Paul is the owner of a large sports apparel company that manufactures a line called ``Pulled Together''—from which five percent of the retail prices are supposed to go to social programs in South-Central Los Angeles. Devin is planning to leave her 60-year-old husband and return to work (even though ``Having every material thing in the world that she could possibly desire was certainly seductive....It was every woman's dream'') when he's shot and killed in his car. In Lange's two-dimensional sense of things, Paul is the Hard-Hearted Businessman; his secretary and former lover is the Woman Scorned; his brother, Sam, is the Jealous Underachiever; a Pulled Together worker attempting to unionize the shop is an Angry Black Man; and so forth. Devin, however, is never satisfactorily defined, even in clichÇ terms, since the reader is meant to wonder whether or not she's the murderer. There is some campy fun here, not in terms of the supposed mystery, which is crystal-clear from the start, but from Lange's relentless use of real-life people and places to add gloss to the story. When Paul and Devin throw a fancy shindig, the Clintons show up, as do the Mosbachers (``albeit Republicans''); and when Devin dines at Spago, she encounters Cher ``with her bagel-boy boyfriend,'' Linda Evangelista, Wynona Ryder, and Heidi Fleiss. She even befriends a fashion model and discovers lesbian chic. Meanwhile, Lange certainly keeps things moving—the chapters are brief, and the cast is large. Entertaining for stargazers, but no big prize. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80191-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.
This is a book which courts the dangers of two extremes.
It can be taken not seriously enough or, more likely, critical climate considered, too seriously. Kesey's first novel is narrated by a half-Indian schizophrenic who has withdrawn completely by feigning deaf-muteness. It is set in a mental ward ruled by Big Nurse—a monumental matriarch who keeps her men in line by some highly original disciplinary measures: Nursey doesn't spank, but oh that electric shock treatment! Into the ward swaggers McMurphy, a lusty gambling man with white whales on his shorts and the psychology of unmarried nurses down to a science. He leads the men on to a series of major victories, including the substitution of recent issues of Nugget and Playboy for some dated McCall's. The fatuity of hospital utilitarianism, that alcohol-swathed brand of idiocy responsible for the custom of waking patients from a deep sleep in order to administer barbiturates, is countered by McMurphy's simple, articulate, logic. This is a thoroughly enthralling, brilliantly tempered novel, peopled by at least two unforgettable characters. (Big Nurse is custom tailored for a busty Eileen Heckert.)
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1962
ISBN: 0451163966
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1961
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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