Written on ice cubes in 86-proof ink. Quite amusing. And as perishable as the rock classics Pete reveres.
This time out, Lindquist (Carnival Desires, 1990, etc.) gives us Jane Austen in reverse.
Ex-grunge star Pete Tyler’s Seattle rock band fell apart eight years ago, and since then he’s become a lawyer. Now, at 36 and after sex with some 300 women, he wants to marry. Like the deal-making screenwriter in Carnival who wanted to leave the scene after too many “club sluts,” wifeless Pete floats through his days on raw unfiltered Camels and shots of Johnnie Walker while fearing the fast approach of age 40. Women still see some glamour, but not much, in the rock-star manqué, while at the moment Pete’s become page-one news in Seattle for prosecuting local rock guitarist Keith Johnson, a.k.a. Keith Junior, for the date rape of 19-year-old Amber Nickerson. Seattle is famed for its pickup rock bands, and Pete is still up to his follicles in rock, measuring every minute of the day against tunes and lyrics finely detailed throughout the story. He longs for the girl who got away 12 years ago, Beth Keller, whom he hasn’t seen since. He’s deep with a stripper named Winter, bright but not exactly marrying stuff, and has just taken up with Sub Pop A&R executive Esmé, to whose label Keith is signed. The novel’s big lift doesn’t come until Pete’s heavy-drinking assistant prosecutor, Scott, enters and starts spouting first-rate cynical witticisms like a Seattle Oscar Wilde: “The whole retro thing. You might be on the cutting edge with this marriage idea. It’s making a comeback . . . —marriage, adultery, promiscuity, alcoholism, Sinatra, the things that made this a great country.” And so Pete staggers in search of “the curative sensation of human contact” and “the redemptive power of passion.” Fruitlessly.
Written on ice cubes in 86-proof ink. Quite amusing. And as perishable as the rock classics Pete reveres.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-46302-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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