A woman who curdles the blood but can't be begrudged credit for her audacity is the monster at the center of this outrageous and funny novel. Kennedy (Columbine, The Flower of the Republic, Lulu Incognito) has served up imperious women in sex-role reversals before, but he may be unlikely to top this one. Frankie Fitzgibbon is a hitherto mild-mannered home-loan officer when, at 45 and a widow, she flips. The new Frankie is sexually aggressive (wielding her breasts like stun guns) and a demon strategist and mesmerizing spieler whose ruthlessness would make Genghis Khan look like Gandhi. Her aim is to take over her bank and then take on the entire New England banking industry. Opponents tumble like tenpins, others are humbled into being willing slaves. She seduces a 17-year-old high-school drum major for her boy toy and becomes the goddess of a gay hairdresser, stereotypically named Bruce. Gay rights'—and for that matter, women's rights'— partisans may not be pleased. The ``Cockhorse'' in the title can take a Freudian reading. Frankie is always depicted as being utterly self-righteous, and even hurt at not being understood, no matter how low the blow she deals others. Her relentless monologues of self-justification get a little wearisome. Kennedy cannot entirely avoid monotony in a story so focused on a single monomaniac, although he tries by continually raising the hurdles his protagonist kicks over. Particularly comic are Frankie's relationship with her ecology-minded daughter, her opposite in every way, and with her proper little boss, who doesn't know what he's in for when he gives her head. A bravura, darkly comic performance by a novelist who matches his outsized heroine in effrontery.
Pub Date: May 29, 1991
ISBN: 0-395-58499-X
Page Count: 307
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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