Bright lights, long hours.
Attorney and screenwriter Hogan debuts in print with the tale of a young lawyer who likes Rembrandt and is caught in a story fit for the storyboard.
Our unnamed narrator thinks of poems in terms of skinniness, and he likes to spin around in secretaries’ chairs, but he (miraculously) made Law Review, passed the bar, and got a job. “I know going out at half past midnight before the first day of work is a stupid thing to do,” says he, but he does it anyway, and the next night, too, so that instead of arriving at any of the forms of spiritual potential dangled here (Wicca, Buddhism, Sufism, etc.), he remains fixed in his law-school ways, with contempt for legal success. We witness the hazing that new associates are subjected to, and our narrator’s jealousy when a colleague’s knowledge of some sub-sub-clause allows him to save a deal and endear himself to a partner. And that leaves our narrator with nothing to do in a New York City where you’re either busy or dead. Eventually, he winds up in an affair with the wrong woman—secretary of another partner—and even though it’s not his fault she fell (miraculously) in love with him at first sight, he knows he’s dead meat. The result is twin towers of work usually reserved for paralegals on his desk. And if that’s not enough to depress him, maybe the second-person remembrances of childhood, and an approaching crisis with Dad, will do the trick. What we get here might be what’d happened if Ben left Elaine at the church, took the Alfa off to law school, and got that job in plastics, for “This is the time of day that belongs to the suits; this is the time of day for white collars, the time of day when men who talk in the language of almost-math, a shorthand of numbers and mean analysis, exert themselves with metaphors of jungles and appetites . . . . ”
Bright lights, long hours.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-33693-4
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Delta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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