Martin has a gift for shepherding his amiable protagonist through truly absurd situations, but patience for the pinballing...
A nostalgic Floridian with an unsound mind fumbles his way through a series of misadventures and reconciliations.
Georgia novelist Martin (Days of the Endless Corvette, 2007) follows up his sweetly Southern debut with another meandering portrait of a loser who can’t be convinced that he’s lost. This latest comedy introduces protagonist Adam Newman, a 47-year-old divorcée whose best days lay far behind him. He pines for his ex, Evelyn, with whom he had once run a celebrated hot dog stand, and craves the approval of his son Addison, an obituary writer with dreams of grandeur of his own. Unfortunately for him, Adam is almost chronically ill at ease with his own persona, the drunken buffoon who invariably screws things up. “Adam only felt comfortable pretending to be someone he was not: Adam Newman, CPA, or Adam Newman, DDS; around the people he loved, plain Adam Newman found himself behind an invisible wall that no amount of cheer or goodwill allowed him to break through,” Martin writes. Conversely, Adam is an accidental con artist extraordinaire, perhaps not purposefully misleading others, but allowing them their misimpressions as he takes on different roles, ranging from a diamond dealer to a priest. Through the course of his arc, set in the mid-1960s, Adam gets arrested, is committed to a psychiatric ward, attends a wedding and has a hilarious confrontation with the man most responsible for the carnival atmosphere of modern Florida, Walt Disney. It’s an ironic take on an optimistic time in American history, but as Martin takes pleasure in pointing out, sometimes things just don’t turn out OK. “There are moments upon which, even if one is unaware, the entire universe pivots: what is heading up turns down, good becomes bad, sweet goes sour—in short, everything gets bungled,” he writes.
Martin has a gift for shepherding his amiable protagonist through truly absurd situations, but patience for the pinballing plot largely depends on affection for the disingenuous Adam.Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-66256-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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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