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SUMMERTIME

Name: SUMMERTIME
Author: Raffaella Barker
ISBN: 0-375-50387-0

by Raffaella Barker ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2002

Charming follow-up, with the same cast of benign eccentrics, plus a few new ones.

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Venetia and her children, Giles and Felix, and their very young sister, the Beauty, are back (Hens Dancing, 2001)—as befuddled as ever.

Now that boyfriend David has decamped to the farthest reaches of the Amazon to build sets for a jungle movie, Venetia, in rural England, must cope with a peculiar ménage of children, relatives, and pets. It’s not any easier than it was a few years ago, but it’s no less amusing. The Beauty is now three, given to flouncing about in tutus and putting nail polish on the bull terrier’s claws. Venetia’s dotty mother wanders in and out, occasionally pursued by her ardent suitor, the Reverend Trevor Heel. Seems like love is in the air: Venetia’s brother Desmond is marrying at last, and Venetia has unwisely agreed to host the catered affair. For it, Bass and Siren, neo-hippie neighbors, put up a filthy canvas tent left over from a rave and marked with graffiti. Minna, the snooty bride-to-be, is none too pleased. Venetia, meanwhile, has other things to worry about, enumerated on many lists all beginning with the same five items: Cake, Car, Hymns, Drink, and Glasses. She’d considered giving up alcohol until Easter, but now rejects the idea as altogether unwise. Though David tries to stay in touch, his limited communications aren’t enough for Venetia, who has mastered the art of going to pieces without anyone actually noticing. To soothe her nerves and earn some extra money, she begins to decorate jumble-sale sweaters with sequins, beads, odd buttons, and the like for a fashionista friend—and is delighted when these become must-have items for trendy young Londoners. Life goes on, messily as usual. An expedition to the seashore goes instantly awry, making Venetia wonder how she gets herself into one absurd predicament after another. Can she soldier on till David’s eventual return?

Charming follow-up, with the same cast of benign eccentrics, plus a few new ones.

Pub Date: May 14, 2002

ISBN: 0-375-50387-0

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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WITHOUT FAIL

From the Jack Reacher series , Vol. 6

by Lee Child ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

Relentlessly suspenseful and unexpectedly timely: just the thing for Dick Cheney’s bedside reading wherever he’s keeping...

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When the newly elected Vice President’s life is threatened, the Secret Service runs to nomadic soldier-of-fortune Jack Reacher (Echo Burning, 2001, etc.) in this razor-sharp update of The Day of the Jackal and In the Line of Fire that’s begging to be filmed.

Why Reacher? Because M.E. Froelich, head of the VP’s protection team, was once a colleague and lover of his late brother Joe, who’d impressed her with tales of Jack’s derring-do as an Army MP. Now Froelich and her Brooks Brothers–tailored boss Stuyvesant have been receiving a series of anonymous messages threatening the life of North Dakota Senator/Vice President–elect Brook Armstrong. Since the threats may be coming from within the Secret Service’s own ranks—if they aren’t, it’s hard to see how they’ve been getting delivered—they can’t afford an internal investigation. Hence the call to Reacher, who wastes no time in hooking up with his old friend Frances Neagley, another Army vet turned private eye, first to see whether he can figure out a way to assassinate Armstrong, then to head off whoever else is trying. It’s Reacher’s matter-of-fact gift to think of everything, from the most likely position a sniper would assume at Armstrong’s Thanksgiving visit to a homeless shelter to the telltale punctuation of one of the threats, and to pluck helpers from the tiny cast who can fill the remaining gaps because they aren’t idiots or stooges. And it’s Child’s gift to keep tightening the screws, even when nothing’s happening except the arrival of a series of unsigned letters, and to convey a sense of the blank impossibility of guarding any public figure from danger day after highly exposed day, and the dedication and heroism of the agents who take on this daunting job.

Relentlessly suspenseful and unexpectedly timely: just the thing for Dick Cheney’s bedside reading wherever he’s keeping himself these days.

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-399-14861-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SECRET
by Lee Child & Andrew Child

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NO PLAN B
by Lee Child & Andrew Child

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BETTER OFF DEAD
by Lee Child & Andrew Child

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.