THE COMEDY WRITER

Name: THE COMEDY WRITER
Author: Peter Farrelly
ISBN: 0-385-49052-6

by Peter Farrelly ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1998

A winner, nicely skewering some of the weirder elements of life in lotusland, though not as black-witted and biting as some...

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Farrelly’s droll second novel (Outside Providence, 1988) trades on his adventures as a budding screenwriter.

Farrelly co-wrote and co-directed the grossout film Dumb and Dumber and co-directed Kingpin, which also had its grossout moments—as does this. When Henry Halloran, 33, who sells space on cargo ships, is dumped by his Boston girlfriend, he quits his job and takes off for Hollywood to try his skills as a writer. Once there, his attempt to save a woman by the name of Bonnie Driscoll from jumping from a 16th-floor roof fails, but he gets an artful story out of her suicide, a piece he manages to sell to the L.A. Times. He moves into the Blue Terrace apartments, across the hall from starlet Tiffany Pittman, a blond nympho with scientifically engineered breasts, who relies on him for neighborly help but tells him that she has a rule against sex with neighbors. Then the late Bonnie’s not-entirely-sane sister Colleen shows up at Henry’s door with her suitcases, and demands that he take her in until some money she’s expecting from Japan arrives. It never does, of course, and Henry falls ever deeper into the net of Colleen’s nuttiness, as well as into an obsession about Bonnie’s big jump. Meanwhile, he shucks a script around town and lands an agent, who sends him to meet with thuggish producer Ted Bowman. Ted wants him to write a film about romance in the ’90s featuring a love-stricken serial killer. The obliging Henry comes up with the grisly "Ice Cream Man," and the sociopathic Bowman growls with joy. Henry at story’s end has experienced little success either as writer or lover—but he is, nonetheless, a sweetly sympathetic figure

A winner, nicely skewering some of the weirder elements of life in lotusland, though not as black-witted and biting as some other recent Hollywood fiction.

Pub Date: May 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-385-49052-6

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.