A snapshot of what it means to be young, smug and oh-so-trendy, circa 2005.
A wry debut about self-absorbed twentysomethings who ditch bourgeois gigs in data entry for rock-’n’-roll dreams.
A 21st-century Candide, Gary Benchley fled Albany for New York City, starry-eyed about becoming the next Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. Weaned on Royal Trux, Cat Power and other indie-rock no-hit wonders, he aspires to cult status. NPR technology commentator and editor at Harper’s magazine, Ford knowingly conveys the inflated angst and fleeting joys of standard white-boy life. Exploiting his young-man blues, Gary assembles Schizopolis, his multicultural supergroup—gay synth-player, chick drummer and Benchley himself on vocals and three-chord rhythm guitar. And, oh yeah, a black bassist, who, after trenchantly accusing Gary of “racial profiling,” gamely signs on. The alterna-sitcom unwinds as the band pens obscurantist anthems (“Tugboat,” “We’re All Annoying Together”), dazzles drunken handfuls in concert and releases an album, “Dancing with Architecture.” And as a coming of age tale, the novel features obligatory romance: Gary’s lukewarm liaison with one of the Big Apple’s hipper bloggers. Up-to-the-minute breathlessness is its charm, even while the book lacks the resonance of other rock novels like Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity or Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments. Nor does Gary have half the spiritual heft of Holden Caulfield, the granddaddy of the mixed-up seeker genre. Still, there are many disarmingly funny moments, such as Gary’s dad’s insistence that his boy provide him with legitimate career plans by means of a PowerPoint presentation.
A snapshot of what it means to be young, smug and oh-so-trendy, circa 2005.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-452-28663-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
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
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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