A movie novel of tremendous sweep and detail, zapping us with the America of the Thirties and Forties as seen through the eyes of gossip-monger Walter Winchell. Herr, the jivey author of Dispatches (1977), undertakes a spacious picture of US society in pre- and post-WW II and nails it all down in 156 pages. This tour de force presents itself as a movie script, with synoptic montages, scene cuts, and dialogue in script form. Its compression releases a great brio to the page, sends a flow of images racing over the reader's mind, and strips to bare bone a form first handled by John Steinbeck in his novelizations of The Moon Is Down and Of Mice and Men. All these storytelling smarts would get Herr by on their own, but he reaches masterfully beyond mere form by invoking our sympathy for the kind of "great villain" Henry Fielding drew so delightfully in Jonathan Wild Few would think that Broadway columnist Walter Winchell would lend himself to such treatment. But Herr limns Citizen Winchell from childhood to old age with deep understanding, and achieves a peak of pure energy with Winchell lording it at the Stork Club and rat-a-tat-tatting his radio show. Not only does Winchell stride off the page with his compulsions edged and shaded to perfection, but his cronies as well receive strong treatment: affecting scenes abound with Winchell's great buddy sportswriter Damon Runyon, Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley, and press agent Irving Hoffman (read Irving "Swifty" Lazar?) that ink themselves forever into memory—as does Herr's brilliantly realized Chorus of Press Agents groveling at Walter's feet when he is King and bad-mouthing him when he is at last a wandering Broadway ghost. Sumptuous entertainment.
Pub Date: May 18, 1990
ISBN: 0679733930
Page Count: 157
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1990
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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