While some details prove tedious, this book offers an inventive adventure in Las Vegas.
A woman’s fictionalized memoir focuses on love and money.
Debut author Lei explains that she has created a “fictional autobiography”: a work that portrays her past experiences as well as her “deepest fantasies.” This series opener begins in a small town in Missouri. The narrator, Kimmei, left California with her young daughter and two best friends. The reason for the move? She wanted to start anew after the past six years of “turmoil.” That turbulence included a custody battle, a criminal court case, and a love triangle of sorts involving two men, one of whom is referred to as “Bastardick.” But as intriguing as these topics are, the narrative soon shifts back to 2011. Kimmei explains her time working in finance in Las Vegas and it is here where the bulk of the action takes place. There are reflections on past business dealings, Alt-A mortgages, and cryptocurrency. Woven into the mix are memories of her mother’s journey out of Cambodia as well as references that range from business thinkers like James Altucher to the cartoon characters Ren & Stimpy. There is also the looming presence of a romantic interest called “the Italian Devil.” The narrative covers a lot of ground, though the subjects are of varying interest. Neither the narrator’s attendance at a financial conference nor the details of her office make for spellbinding copy. For instance, need readers know that, upon entering Kimmei’s old workplace, her “desk was on the right side of the room, enclosed in three walls”? A greater appeal comes in the form of the various riffs on assets like Bitcoin and quant funds. Discussing the latter, the book notes that “trading strategies are closely guarded secrets” and are out of reach of average investors. These blips of financial insights, combined with harrowing tales of the Cambodian jungle and the sexual antics of the Italian Devil, help to build an original tale. While the sexual tension may be muted thanks to generic terms like “passionate kisses,” readers will likely be curious to know how Kimmei went from her Devil in the desert to a family of women in Missouri.
While some details prove tedious, this book offers an inventive adventure in Las Vegas.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-72710-334-2
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
