Since Hautman has excelled in both fairy tales and comic nightmares (Rag Man, 2001, etc.), he’s just the craftsman to plunk...
Yet another struggling businessman with romance in his heart and felony dogging his footsteps.
Talk about your cosmic justice. The day Nick Fashon finds out that his grandfather, reclusive inventor Caleb Hardy, has been found dead, his body nibbled by coyotes, is the same day that Love & Fashion, his clothing store, has burned to the ground, together with Nick’s uninsured apartment, his nine pairs of Bally shoes, and his collection of 500 Motown records. “Caleb had lost his life, but his stuff was okay. Nick had lost his stuff, but he was alive. Now he had new stuff,” muses the survivor, whose inheritance seems limited to Caleb’s crackpot prototypes—the Inch-Adder, the Comb-n-Clean, and all the rest of their uncommercial ilk. One item, though, seizes Nick’s fancy: the HandyMate, a kitchen gadget that slices, dices, and does everything else. Bent on bringing the enchanted chunk of plastic to market, Nick swiftly finds that although the HandyMate’s seized other fancies too—especially that of Caleb’s girlfriend Yola Fuente, the restaurateur who, claiming half ownership in the thingamabob, is determined to introduce it on her cooking program and run off with the proceeds—it leaves his impecunious partner, Vincent Love, cold, and stirs up nothing but trouble for Nick’s ladylove Gretchen Groth (Archaeology/Univ. of Arizona), whose demand that he not raise seed money from her ex-cop father Bootsie are matched by Bootsie’s demand that he take the money and make them both rich. A slippery insurance agent, a Tucson arson investigator, and an excitable loan shark are all on hand to drag Nick deeper into trouble.
Since Hautman has excelled in both fairy tales and comic nightmares (Rag Man, 2001, etc.), he’s just the craftsman to plunk his appealing hero into the middle of a tale so finely balanced that it could go either way right up to the end.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-0019-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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