An endearingly flawed actor’s thoughts come to life thanks to swift and clever prose.
A young man in a theater troupe struggles to get his life together in the wake of graduate school and a failed marriage.
By the first few pages of McKeon’s debut novel, protagonist and narrator Bob is convinced that it’s “all over, college, grad school, the seventies and the marriage.” The actor is on a “sweat-soaked” Naugahyde bus seat with his friend Ripley. It’s 1980, and the two 25-year-olds have accepted paid summer residencies at the PCPA theater, a well-known company in the central California tourist town of Santa Maria, in order to actively run from the realities of having just finished MFAs. What the PCPA fails to offer them in terms of speaking roles, money, and a glamorous locale it more than makes up for with its host of fascinating fellow actors. The members of the company start to couple and uncouple in between wild, hazy parties and rehearsals for everything from Henry V to Death of a Salesman. But, being theatrical and eccentric, these are not your average quirky 20-somethings; there’s a fugitive from the FBI, a man who refuses to be separated from his dog, and Bob’s sublimely blunt roommate, Angie—who, like the protagonist, might have gotten married much too young. Each encounter forces Bob to come to terms with his insecurities, his unsuccessful marriage, and what his craft still has to teach him about life. A final twist on the very last page is one of the few moments that land with a disappointing thud—but only because Bob’s subsequent reaction is missing. Intriguing as they are, the other characters are mere stage directions for the real star: Bob’s wry inner monologue. His thoughts jump from the self-aggrandizing fervor of an improvised audition to the somber rerun of his wife’s departure before ending with a perfectly timed, caustic joke (“Ripley was raised Catholic. He knew all about” self-loathing, Bob says at one point, casually reducing his only real friend in the world). McKeon times these beats impeccably; he writes with a kinetic energy that propels Bob’s darkest and funniest moments at the same pace, making for both a fully realized narrator and a compulsive read.
An endearingly flawed actor’s thoughts come to life thanks to swift and clever prose.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-90971-3
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Strutting & Fretting
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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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