A well-thought-out blueprint for fixing a major problem in professional sports that, alas, will likely be benched by the...
Wilken’s debut novel offers an intriguing solution to the greed and inflated salaries marring the popularity of professional sports.
James Mitchum IV owns the Houston Tornadoes, a fictional NBA team. Disgruntled with some players’ me-first attitudes, Mitchum presents a radical idea to his fellow owners: instead of competing with each other to pay spiraling salaries, band together and offer set salaries to players in that year’s draft class—salaries just above the minimum specified in the collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union; then use the savings to improve teachers’ salaries across the country and lower ticket prices, so more fans can afford to attend games. As Mitchum later explains to a gathering of rookie players: “No one will be paid because they were a high performer in college. You have to perform with the big boys to get the big salaries.” Wilken deftly covers this issue from all angles, as the rest of the slim volume covers the fallout of the owners’ agreement, with reactions from the rookies—whether entitled, poor or international—their self-absorbed agents, the players’ union, and the media, along with input from the players’ friends and families. Some of the rookies rightly come off as whiny, such as Tyson Williams, the No. 4 draft choice from an upper-middle-class background: “Dad, they are offering me a measly $700,000 a year for three years with no sign-on bonus.” His father wisely responds, “Ty, how can you use the word MEASLY when referring to a $700,000 salary?” Most of the characters—quite a few of whom serve as a Greek chorus representing a fed-up, underpaid public—are one-dimensional, particularly the poor Latino player, the loudmouthed agent, and the ambitious sportscaster. That shallowness lessens the impact of a promising concept. And in our professional sports world, filled with win-at-any-cost owners unlikely to cooperate, this novel unfortunately will remain a well-meaning fairy tale.
A well-thought-out blueprint for fixing a major problem in professional sports that, alas, will likely be benched by the reality of owners wanting more dollars than sense.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1434382214
Page Count: 184
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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