Outrageously funny, deftly narrated, but spun out for too many pages, tripping up on its own tangled plot.
Another Hollywood romp from Lefcourt (Eleven Karens, 2003, etc.), who takes us on the road with a washed-up TV producer trying to jump-start his career with a reality series in Uzbekistan.
Charlie Berns, like every has-been in LA, was a serious player not so long ago. But for the past four years Charlie has run out of ideas—at least the sort anyone in town wants to buy. Broke and homeless, Charlie has been reduced to living in his nephew’s pool house and driving a borrowed Honda to his DA (Debtors Anonymous) meetings. At one of these, he meets a shadowy character named Fenster, who claims to work for the CIA and pitches Charlie one of the strangest story ideas he’s ever heard: a reality show about a Central Asian warlord. It’s an indication of how desperate Charlie is that he not only hears Fenster out but signs on for the pitch, which he takes to a secret subsidiary of ABC called (what else?) ABCD. They snap up Fenster’s treatment, and soon Charlie and Fenster are trekking deep into the mountains of Uzbekistan to meet Izbul Kharkov, a rebel warlord who rules over a godforsaken region of the former Soviet Union that’s about the size of Montana. A big fan of The Sopranos, Izbul is delighted at the thought of appearing on TV and gladly agrees to allow a crew of Polish cameramen to follow him and his family around all day as they work, eat, argue, copulate, kill camels, fight off hand-grenade attacks, assassinate rivals, and shake down old men and children who owe them money. The show is an immediate hit, but Charlie is the victim of his own success when the Georgian mafia, the State Department, the IRS, and the US Special Forces become involved. No such thing as bad publicity? Maybe in LA, but not Uzbekistan.
Outrageously funny, deftly narrated, but spun out for too many pages, tripping up on its own tangled plot.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-4920-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
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
BOOK REVIEW
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