A pleasant take on the vanity of human wishes: well conceived, nicely wrapped up.
From second-novelist Stella (Fat Bald Jeff, 2001): a good-natured comedy about social climbing as a nice girl from Chicago’s South Side gets taken up by the glitterati.
Despite the subtitle, there’s actually not much room for leisure in the world of budding fashionista Lisa Galisa. A junior sales clerk in Women’s Wear at Fishman’s Department Store, Lisa grew up in retailing—as the daughter of a small shopkeeper in a working-class neighborhood. Living now on the North Side and (horror of horrors) rooting for the Cubs, Lisa has put much of her proletarian past behind her, but she still has a ways to go. Her gay sidekick Tim Gideon will poke her occasionally when she lapses into a South Side accent, and she’s never lost her taste for Old Style beer. But Lisa is thrust into the limelight when her boss notices her resemblance to Maria Callas and uses her as a living model of the late diva in promoting the store’s new spring line—which is in the Greek mode. Offhand by nature, Lisa masters the needed air of mystery and hauteur, though she has to contend both with the malevolence of a vicious society columnist (on whose shoes she once vomited) and with the jealousy of the Men’s Wear supervisor (who came up with the Greek motif and had his idea stolen by Lisa’s boss). But she succeeds well enough to be taken up by society hostess Honey Dietrich, who hires her as a personal assistant and sets her to planning an annual Christmas gala. Has Lisa found her true place in society? Or is she rising for a fall? Perhaps she should concentrate less on the dolce vita of the North Shore and pay a bit more attention to schoolteacher/janitor Ray Fuchet, the admirer who fell for her while playing Ari Onassis in the Fishman’s campaign.
A pleasant take on the vanity of human wishes: well conceived, nicely wrapped up.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-609-80972-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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
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
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