A clever but taxingly overdone comedic performance.
In this wildly farcical, speculative tale, a decadeslong rivalry between friends results in the expulsion of Texas from the United States.
In 2027, Peter Phelt, the governor of the Lone Star State, receives some extraordinary news: The other 49 states have voted Texas, which they call a “monotonous inanity,” out of the union. Puerto Rico is immediately elevated to statehood and takes the Texas name, so Phelt is left with no other choice but to rename his territory; it’s now “the Republic of North Mexico.” However, the fate of Texas is not just the result of its insufferableness—Phelt’s woes have been orchestrated by Pastor Arlen Bob Yates, the founder of the Church of the P-Free Sabbath. Yates’ megachurch is not only wildly wealthy, but also influential—he controls all of Texas’ state politics and dominates the FBI and IRS as well. His ultimate goal is “taking over the world,” but his most impassioned desire seems to be to ruin Phelt, in particular: “I came to Texas…to amass the fortune I would need to destroy you when you were at the pinnacle of your career, because you’ve ruined my life,” he says. When Yates and Phelt were friends as children in Indiana, Yates learned that they were switched at birth and raised by each other’s biological parents. Debut author Ayer confusingly jumps back and forth in time in this narrative, conveying not only the history of Phelt and Yates’ personal rivalry, but of the state of Texas as well. The plot is ingeniously inventive, and Yates’ character, a “master dissembler” who creates a memorably vulgar lampoon of a popular church, is a riveting caricature. The author unambiguously announces his literary influences—there are references to both Jonathan Swift and Kurt Vonnegut here—but the novel is more manically ecstatic than comedic, and it lacks the astute social commentary of those luminaries’ works. Also, Ayer seems intent on packing a punchline into nearly every sentence—a style that feels more vaudevillian than satirical and that is ultimately exhausting.
A clever but taxingly overdone comedic performance.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-17773-0
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Milwood Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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