Like the celluloid career of the author, this tale about the search for the truth about a deceased star's past reels out yards of energetic banality with some happy surprises—here, bits of Hollywood authentica and a few real funnies. Middle-age hack journalist Jay Richards, just getting by as a stringer for a British tabloid, finds a scrap of old audition tape on which a then-eight-year-old Sonny Skies (nÇ Homer Brownlee) warbles something about a bluebird. Elle McBrien, a minor producer at a media giant, tracks down Jay and the tape. Both have a documentary in mind about the former child star and leading man who was reported to have died in 1944 at Normandy. Finding a common cause and common flaw (both are recovering alcoholics), the pair scour Hollywood, sniffing out Sonny's old circle: a 90-year-old PR man glad to talk (with his eye on a gift of grass); Sonny's pal and stand-in, Billy Dwyre, who tells lies in vain; and of course the deceased Howard Kenelly, the Howard Hughes figure whose organization is shelling out mysterious pensions to a batch of Sonny-related people; but they can't contact Sonny's wife, Frances Farnsworth, who seemed to have split right after the marriage. Rooney tosses in an exhumation in Normandy; some virtuoso computer crime; a calamitous confrontation with Frances Farnsworth; the solving of a murder; and a visit with, uh huh, ``a round little man with wisps of white hair... and the voice of Jeannette MacDonald.'' Finally, an orgy flick brings the real Sonny into view. Between the labored creaks of plot and humor, there are moments to cherish, such as the titles of Sonny's movies (Young Bert Einstein; Spring Time in the Minarets). However, X-out the X- rated and it's one for Judge Hardy. Try Rooney's dribble-and-bounce autobiography, Life Is Too Short (1991), for sturdier stuff.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-55972-231-2
Page Count: 252
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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