A friend-triangle so busy with the bright lights of the big city that it never quite decides whether to be a fun read or a...
Two gay men and their pseudo-hag go looking for love and drugs in the London club scene.
It’s not surprising that British author Burston acknowledges Russell T. Davies here, since this debut is so clearly influenced by Davies’ fizzy UK TV show Queer as Folk. It could almost have used some of the same characters’ names. Readers may think at first that the story is going to be about 32-year-old Martin, whom we meet in the opening pages as he is slowly realizing that Christopher, his serious boyfriend, has just left him after acquiring a new, gymed-up physique and the wandering eyes to go with it. Martin’s best mate John—a flighty flight attendant who’s mentally a 15-year-old, with a sense of caring compassion to match—is sort of sorry for him, but not really, and he uses Martin’s newly single status as an excuse to drag him out to every club and bar in town so John can show off his new drug-dealer boyfriend Fernando. The third in this little triangle is Martin’s friend Caroline, a Vogue-ready young professional about town with a boyfriend, Graham, whom she’s convinced is gay, and a mounting coke habit. None of them seems terribly bright, but they do like their drugs, and a good chunk of the tale is filled by Martin and John’s wild, Ecstasy-soaked escapades. Meanwhile, Caroline spins around in her own insecure orbit. She drives the actually quite heterosexual Graham away by trying to out him at a family dinner, and then her boss catches her doing lines on her mousepad. Although he gives Martin the denouement, Burston seems more emotionally invested in Caroline’s character, relegating John and Martin to their own stunted immaturity.
A friend-triangle so busy with the bright lights of the big city that it never quite decides whether to be a fun read or a morality tale. It ends up a slick but unrewarding mix of the two.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-69133-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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