by Pasha Adam ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2016
A wildly entertaining take on Hollywood and the slime beneath the sparkle.
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A Los Angeles noir novel shows readers a side of the city that they don’t often allow themselves to see.
A rising screenwriter, a smoky bar, a beautiful blonde across the room. The classic imagery is all here, but this isn’t quite that kind of story. The action immediately cuts to years later, when Dante Lee, the screenwriter—now a jaded never-was who files entertainment/gossip blog posts under a pseudonym—finds himself in the middle of what’s clearly not his first uncomfortable sex scene. Even outside Dante’s emotional exhaustion, Hollywood is clearly in decline, particularly due to a rash of hacking—and subsequent scandals—that has both studio executives and starlets waffling between panic and the warpath. Enter the blonde from the bar, Grace Chase, who’s used the intervening four years to build a successful acting career as the face of a now-major TV franchise. Dante’s anything but eager to help Grace, but he can’t abandon her to the hackers blackmailing her with incriminating photos. To help her, he’ll have to dig into parts of his history he’d rather forget and confront the uncomfortable facts of Grace’s life—and where that leaves him. The reluctant hero is one of many well-worn noir tropes Adam (American Asshole, 2016) employs, but the author uses them well. Dante is a perfect combination of charming and difficult for this sort of tale, and Grace is pitch-perfect as his opposite number. But the glue that holds it all together is the twisting novel’s style and sense of humor. Sharp narration and situation comedy blend with the genuine threat of the hackers and Hollywood itself to keep the pages turning. And Dante offers acerbic asides frequently, demonstrating more self-awareness than most protagonists (“Beyond the city limits of Los Angeles, there’s a high risk of contracting terminal boredom. Nothing interesting ever happened from traveling that far east”). He also envisions the way scenes in his life would look in movie form. These elements give the narration a unique sense of character and at the same time reveal the one thing Dante might not want readers to know—beneath the jaundiced exterior, he still holds his dreams of the silver screen.
A wildly entertaining take on Hollywood and the slime beneath the sparkle.Pub Date: July 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-64606-945-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Post-Entropy
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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