By now, this joke has worn very thin indeed.
Fact/fiction hybrid profiling the fake conservative pundit whose Internet hoaxes caused a small ruckus during the 2008 election.
Martin Eisenstadt is the creation of filmmakers Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin, who now give their Frankenstein his own book, a purported memoir. Marty’s childhood is little more than the punch line to a joke about his mom, a secretary at the Nixon White House having sex with John Ehrlichman in the Oval Office. Soon enough her son will be having sex himself, with Iran Contra scandal bit player Fawn Hall. The use of boldface names, intended to be amusingly nervy, comes across as a crass device to float Marty through rough Washington waters and spare the authors the hard work of building a character. Marty is just one more unscrupulous Washington operator who will use any means necessary to become an A-list pundit. He helps Lee Atwater create the notorious Willie Horton ad and slimes John McCain in his 2000 campaign against Bush. Along the way he founds his own think tank, named for Warren Harding; fails to establish a casino in Baghdad’s Green Zone; and is held captive by Somali pirates (a fleeting reference). More contemporaneously, he wins media attention with his raw YouTube videos for (or against?) Rudy Giuliani and then, referred by his good friend Joe Lieberman, joins the McCain campaign and does sterling work in the blogosphere, sometimes fooling the cable-news channels. His finest hour comes sitting next to Meghan McCain and Joe the Plumber at an election-special Saturday Night Live show. Next thing you know, Marty is finished, having hubristically exposed himself as the source for a Sarah Palin story. Is this, then, the “presidential campaign tell-all book” the publisher promises? The claim may bring to mind Joe Klein’s fictional take on Bill Clinton’s campaign, but Primary Colors had a meaty story line and characters. All Mirvish and Gorlin offer are leftovers.
By now, this joke has worn very thin indeed.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-86547-914-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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
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