A sharp contemporary satire that lovingly confronts the raucous realities of Hollywood, the internet, and the media.
A bored office worker moves to Los Angeles and tries to make it big with a bizarre crowdfunding campaign in Adam’s debut novel.
River Conway is a 29-year-old aspiring singer and actor whose dreams have been sidelined. After he and his girlfriend, Alana, graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, they moved to Arizona to care for her ailing father. Seven long years later, they’re still there; River is working a dead-end job and worries that it’s too late for him to break into the entertainment industry. Alana donates $10,000 to her celebrity crush’s crowdfunding campaign, and she and River are invited to his party in LA. There, River is inspired to launch a campaign of his own. Although his mother always told him that he was born for greatness (“Why else would an honest, salt of the earth, lower middle class couple from Who Cares, Ohio, name their son River?”), he decides to start “Save an A$$hole,” asking donors to help him leave behind a lifestyle that they wouldn’t want to live themselves. Soon, River has second thoughts and deletes the campaign, but then Alana surprisingly offers to move to LA with him. In Hollywood, her rapid-fire networking lands her a role on a sitcom, and River resorts to relaunching his crowdfund concept. He’s soon contacted by a TV comedy channel that wants to film the last days of the campaign as a telethon. River agrees, and the resulting media sensation and scathing headlines (“Douchebag Becomes Millionaire For No Reason, Nation Weeps”) lead to an exploitative reality show that takes him down an uncertain path. Adam has written a wickedly funny, timely satire, full of piercing jabs at Hollywood and crystal-clear characterizations of brain-dead, disingenuous LA denizens. The fact that River is Tisch-trained but still becomes the chief flake of the moment is amusing, and it shows the push-and-pull relationship that members of River’s generation have with industries that simultaneously seduce and repulse them. The scenarios are wild, but the novel does well to wonder if people obsessed with popular culture can survive in LA without descending into tragicomedy. The ending is a bit neat, but Adam’s tight prose and perfect timing make the story as a whole both playful and gratifying.
A sharp contemporary satire that lovingly confronts the raucous realities of Hollywood, the internet, and the media.Pub Date: July 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-64606-946-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Post-Entropy
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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