A well-engineered farce with some problematic characterization.
In this comic novel set in 1981, a pre-wedding reception with a spiked punch bowl leads to revelations among a group of old friends and acquaintances.
When Blair Brackman, a therapist, receives an invitation to his client’s surprise pre-wedding reception, it galvanizes his resolve. He’s carried a torch for his patient, Melissa Manning, since second grade; as her therapist, he gladly helped her through her first divorce while concealing his own feelings. Now he believes that she’s making another mistake by marrying Rod Schoenlieber, so he vows to “break up the damn wedding.” Melissa’s disorganized mother, Meg, is holding the informal reception in her apartment, and she invites everyone in her daughter’s old address book—without being aware of how her friendships have changed. Invitees include Deirdre Rehnquist (also Blair’s patient) and her date, Milton Perkins, a poet; Deirdre’s depressed, broke ex-husband, John Palopolus; Rebecca Harvey, a hardworking single mother with a provocative air; Melissa’s sister, Val Manning; narcissistic Dickie Rawlings (yet another of Blair’s patients, who’s having an affair with Deirdre) and his wife, the sexy, dim Candy; C.W. Dexter, an interior decorator; and a British man named Nigel Davies. Although Meg intends to serve a nonalcoholic punch, some guests spike it heavily and general drunkenness ensues. In the bedroom, Blair hides out, working up his nerve; John hides from Deirdre; and Dickie and Deirdre have sex on top of the guests’ coats. Meanwhile, the party unleashes tensions, revelations, and new understandings. Vincent (Saving Dr. Block, 2013, etc.) handles his farcelike plot very capably, as each new doorbell ring sets off a fresh chain of surprises, disasters, or erotic energies. His characterizations overly rely on stereotypes, however, including a flamboyant, gay designer; a ditzy mom; a pretentious poet; and a vapid blonde. Also, the overall tone isn’t comic enough to overcome the distastefulness of Blair’s unethical, confidence-breaking behavior, as he sees Melissa’s sessions in terms of their benefits for him: “He was being paid to look at her, to have her close by. And listen to some degree, of course, which he could always finesse.” Given this malpractice, Blair’s self-pity (“Prometheus had a picnic compared to me”) is hard to take.
A well-engineered farce with some problematic characterization.Pub Date: July 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5336-6119-7
Page Count: 274
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Too much hocus-pocus, not enough focus. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Part of Hoffman's great talent is her wonderful ability to sift some magic into unlikely places, such as a latter-day Levittown (Seventh Heaven, 1990) or a community of divorcées in Florida (Turtle Moon, 1992).
But in her 11th novel, a tale of love and life in New England, it feels as if the lid flew off the jar of magic—it blinds you with fairy dust. Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned sisters, only 13 months apart, but such opposites in appearance and temperament that they're dubbed ``Day and Night'' by the two old aunts who are raising them. Sally is steady, Gillian is jittery, and each is wary, in her own way, about the frightening pull of love. They've seen the evidence for themselves in the besotted behavior of the women who call on the two aunts for charms and potions to help them with their love lives. The aunts grow herbs, make mysterious brews, and have a houseful of—what else?—black cats. The two girls grow up to flee (in opposite directions) from the aunts, the house, and the Massachusetts town where they've long been shunned by their superstitious schoolmates. What they can't escape is magic, which follows them, sometimes in a particularly malevolent form. And, ultimately, no matter how hard they dodge it, they have to recognize that love always catches up with you. As always, Hoffman's writing has plenty of power. Her best sentences are like incantations—they won't let you get away. But it's just too hard to believe the magic here, maybe because it's not so much practical magic as it is predictable magic, with its crones and bubbling cauldrons and hearts of animals pierced with pins. Sally and Gillian are appealing characters, but, finally, their story seems as murky as one of the aunts' potions—and just as hard to swallow.
Too much hocus-pocus, not enough focus. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)Pub Date: June 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14055-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
New York is colonized by giant talking canines in newcomer Bakis's wry variation on the traditional shaggy dog story. Imagination is the key here. We need to understand that at the end of the 19th century a crazed German biologist named Augustus Rank performed a succession of medical experiments that resulted in a weird genetic mutation of his subjects and created a race of ``monster dogs''—giant rottweilers and Dobermans who can speak and walk on their hind legs. After living for more than a hundred years in the seclusion of a remote Canadian settlement called Rankstadt, they are forced to move in the year 2008 to New York (where 150 of them take up residence at the Plaza Hotel) when Rankstadt is destroyed. In their 19th-century garb—Prussian military uniforms for the ``men,'' bustles for the ``women''—they cut impressive figures on the streets of Manhattan, where they quickly become celebrities and philanthropists. At Christmas they parade down Fifth Avenue in sleighs, and shortly after their arrival they construct an enormous Bavarian castle on the Lower East Side. When an NYU coed named Cleo Pira writes about them for a local newspaper, the dogs adopt her as their spokesperson and bring her into the inner life of their society. From Cleo's perspective the dogs are benign, quaint, and deeply tragic, and the more fascinated she becomes by their history—both as they relate it to her and as she discovers it for herself through Rank's own archives—the darker and more doomed their society appears. By the time Cleo has learned the secrets contained in Rank's past, it's too late to save his descendants, who have unknowingly brought about their own destruction. Serious enough, but also funny and imaginative: a vivid parable that manages to amuse even as it perplexes and intrigues.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-374-18987-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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