by Mark Wisniewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2011
A picaresque treat, here’s the tale of a bittersweet cookie from Kankakee all hot for New York City. Will the Big Apple feed her fantasies or have her for lunch?
Having caught her tree-surgeon boyfriend in flagrante delicto not with a real-life squeeze but a plastic vagina (!), Michelle reckons she’s ripe for a re-think—of life, love-life, the whole shebang. “You think too much,” he tells her. And so, remorselessly, she proceeds to—throughout all the pages of this chuckler. For while action abounds, it’s the running commentary that runs this show: Seinfeld-style making-much-about-everything, occasionally with a social-satire edge—the heroine, for example, typecasting the All-American Job as “typing, selling insurance, or otherwise staring at a monitor.” Speaking of which, when she flees heartland humdrum, she hits Gotham without one—a job, that is. So, plucky as are all headstrong distaff protags from the Victorians on, she improvises—and develops a scam selling courtesy tickets to the Letterman show. The requisite find-an-apartment bit is handled with a sweetly weirdo touch, as Michelle lands a berth with an oldster who charges cheap, so long as Michelle bathes her and suffers her singing of “zany Norwegian songs.” Mishaps mount up—she crashes her car trying to sell it to a perplexed Chinese family, gets busted by Letterman staffers, loses her digs to a freak conflagration. Not much sex in the city for Michelle, either, as any budding romance wilts. Yet she gets savvier, more self-acceptingly self-aware—for instance, despite near-smothering under black-clad bohos, she realizes she’s cool with the fact that “I prefer clothes that cover my navel, and songs by Phil Collins can still make me cry.” As the novel speeds toward conclusion, however, something odd happens. Wisniewski (Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman, 1997, etc.) eventually careens out of laugh-land and places the reader in an atmosphere bleak, violent and very dark. It doesn’t quite work. Still, this is one smart hoot.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-928589-60-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gival Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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