A sometimes-insightful but flawed drama.
Joshua and Foley’s debut screenplay tells the story of how one man’s dark tendencies upend a Midwestern community.
Police Lt. Frank Murphy is used to covering up for his 24-year-old younger brother, Tom, a lovable screw-up. Tom is pursuing an MBA degree in Arizona, but he’s come home to Briarwood, Michigan, for a friend’s wedding. Soon, Frank has to pick up his drunk, naked, and unconscious brother from the house of Tom’s longtime friend Megan, who’s clearly rattled by something that Tom did, although she makes no formal complaint. The next morning, however, Tom claims he can’t remember what happened. “What time did I come here?” he asks Frank’s wife, Melissa, the next morning. “Frank? How did I end up with him?” At the wedding, Megan tells Tom to stay away from her, but she still doesn’t want to talk about what happened. Tom drinks heavily at the reception, joking with his friends and sneaking drinks to Katie, the 16-year-old sister of one of his friends. Later, after Tom is caught attempting to rape Katie in the bathroom, Frank tries to keep everyone from finding out. The event inspires Megan to confess to Melissa what happened the night before. The book concludes with a few sample storyboards by debut illustrator Miller, which will aid readers in imaging how a filmed version of the screenplay might look. Overall, the screenplay tackles the severity of sexual assault in an unflinching way, and it does a particularly good job of showing how quickly some men will try to laugh off or cover up terrible crimes of their peers: “Relax,” another cop tells Tom at one point. “As far as Megan goes, she wasn’t exactly sober herself.” A number of superfluous characters and exchanges prove distracting, however, and after Tom’s crimes are revealed, the plot assumes a melodramatic tone. The ending, especially, goes off the rails in a way that overshadows the central issue of the story.
A sometimes-insightful but flawed drama.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4809-8146-1
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Rosedog Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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