An engaging tale about the sleazy, aspirational culture of 1970s street fashion.
In this novel, a fashion salesman finds himself caught up in the tendrils of crime and betrayal in Los Angeles.
It’s 1969 and Matthew Street’s marriage has fallen apart, forcing him to crash on Chris Styles’ couch—where he pines after his friend’s Israeli girlfriend and becomes the victim of a home invasion at gunpoint—and then to room with Logan Alexander, an insufferable drunk who lives off his parents’ wealth. The one bright spot in all this is that Matthew’s barbershop has experienced a bump in revenue ever since he started selling stylish shirts in the front window. This gives Matthew an idea: to turn his shop into a clothing boutique aimed at the young, radical generation. As he pitches his idea to Chris, Logan, and a third friend, Jon Lewis, while sitting in a north Hollywood diner, he finds himself getting counter-pitched by a stranger in the next booth. The man works for a company whose “specialty is selling and marketing bell-bottom pants to retailers. He wanted their business when they were ready to move forward with their plan.” How hard can it be to sell pants in LA? Pretty hard, as it turns out, especially when egos, sex, drugs, the Mafia, the FBI, and the chance at a whole lot of money get involved. Spencer’s (The Tipping Point of Oliver Bass, 2017) prose perfectly captures the seedy, hedonistic LA of bygone decades, where everything good or bad seems not only possible, but also inevitable. Matthew is a character who is never quite satisfied, with his arrogance and cynicism shining through even when he means to praise: “He loved her look. She looked healthy, but not athletic-healthy. Like the kind of woman who’d once had an eating disorder and learned the dangers, but there was no way she was about to get fat.” This makes him hard to like, and the author’s attempts to give the story a neat frame do not quite work. Even so, as a Scorsesian tale of bad people in over their heads, the novel effectively provides a rise and fall saga set in a colorful time and place.
An engaging tale about the sleazy, aspirational culture of 1970s street fashion.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-21232-6
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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