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
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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