by Millicent Chartwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 24, 2015
A racy guilty pleasure replete with politics, romance, and plenty of sex.
A lobbyist and consultant juggles her political aspirations with her search for a meaningful relationship in this debut novel.
Clarissa Bateman, a beautiful, savvy woman, enjoys a thriving career and an active social life. Inspired by the social justice movements of the 1960s, she’s a lobbyist in Washington state by the late ’70s, with her own successful political consulting firm. When she’s not advocating for education and women’s issues, she’s spending time with her friends experiencing Seattle and Olympia’s vibrant music and arts scenes. Her intellectual prowess is only matched by her voracious sexual appetite, but short-lived dalliances with a reporter, a senator, and a free-spirited woman left her wanting something more stable. Her first taste of mature romance comes when she meets Karl Springly at a wedding reception. The slightly older, recently divorced news director courts her ardently and quickly becomes a devoted friend; however, his reluctance to make a firm commitment causes Clarissa to doubt the relationship will become permanent. When Clarissa meets Edward Burke, the new commissioner for higher education, the attraction is instant and mutual. Clarissa and Edward seem destined to be together if they can navigate some serious complications, including their political alliance, his pending divorce, and her unresolved relationship with Karl. Chartwell’s brisk and breezy narrative paints a vivid portrait of one woman’s life in the free-wheeling ’70s. The novel’s strongest elements are its settings and dynamic, unflappable heroine. Clarissa’s life is a whirlwind of work and lively parties, and Chartwell expertly re-creates the vibrant music scene of the era and the events where Clarissa mixes and mingles with people who may become political allies. She remains the novel’s most fully realized character, particularly in the sensitive way the tale explores how her party-girl social life often clashes with her serious political ambitions. Although some of the supporting characters are rather thinly developed, particularly Clarissa’s many flings, Karl and Edward are solid romantic interests who enable Clarissa to examine what she really wants out of life.
A racy guilty pleasure replete with politics, romance, and plenty of sex.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4834-3936-5
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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by Harper Lee
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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