The founder of a West Coast modeling agency uses the fashion world as a high-glam backdrop for a standard-issue tale of ambition and betrayalin a first novel written with screenwriter and author Barsocchini (Ghost, 1989). Fortyish Jessica Cartwright has built up her agency via hard work and motherly good principlesand she's reaping the rewards: The agency is hot, her corn-fed superstar Caddie Dean is on the cover of Time, and young lawyer Phil is also her lover. But trouble is brewing in Europe. Ambitious ne'er-do-well Garret Stowe gleans from the Time article that there's big money to be had in the agency business. He insinuates his way into a failing Parisian agency, and, by resorting to unscrupulous shenanigans, revivifies it. Then it's off to New York City. Bankrolled by an ex-lover, Garret starts his own agency, luring away Jessica's top bookers, her lover Phil, and many of her best models, including gullible Caddie Dean. Meanwhile, Aaron Adam, a Calvin Klein-like designer, decides that Caddie's too overexposed to star in his jean ads, and he challenges the agents to help his photographer come up with a new message. Garret proposes an unsavory idea: photographs of older men ogling jailbait-aged girls. He flies in gorgeous Ginny Fischer, a Wisconsin 12-year-old whom ethical Jessica has refused to sign because of her youth. But as Garret proceeds to cheat and corrupt everyone around him, Jessica slowly hatches a plan for worldwide expansion. Then, when Caddie suffers a disfiguring accident, Jessica suspects Garret and launches an investigation into her rival's mysterious past. Mostly workmanlike stuff: Green-eyed beauties, glitzy restaurants, and well-choreographed sex—the requisite fare for the genre. Still, Garret's nefarious manipulations are over-the-top and amusing: His villainous imagination infuses this dusty model-war rehash with welcome fresh air.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93795-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
