A sweet, sometimes zany message-centered tale; this is the first in a promised series chronicling the squeaky-clean...
Big changes are in store for a TV news show after a religious young woman joins the team.
With sweeps week approaching, and a young punk of a boss demanding higher ratings, News Channel 7 producer Hugo Talley has no choice but to approach his diva anchor Gilda Braun about freshening up her look to bring in younger viewers. Humiliated, but reluctant to give up her post, the longtime newswoman succumbs to Botox, which does make her face smoother, but also gives her an unnerving perma-smile at odds with the serious reports she delivers. Unable to even furrow her brow, Gilda disappears, leaving Hugo to scramble for a replacement. Desperate, he turns to his new assistant, Hayden Hazard, a relentlessly cheerful and openly evangelical young lady with telegenic, wholesome good looks. One of seven home-schooled children from a family of professional clowns, Hayden is a hit with viewers, as well as with nice-guy reporter Ray Duffey, who shares Hayden’s beliefs, but is a bit more discreet about praying at work. It is Ray who finds himself the subject of one of his own news reports when a cranky interviewee attacks him on camera, to the delight of his ratings-starved manager. But something about the whole incident troubles Ray, who digs a bit deeper and discovers that his disgruntled attacker has connections to a wastewater treatment plant explosion and cover-up. The conspiracy is somehow connected to the missing, and possibly endangered, Gilda. Hayden, meanwhile, has a far-reaching effect on several of her colleagues, including the tightly wound Hugo, who realizes that all the anti-anxiety pills in the world will not fix the empty feeling in his soul. Gutteridge at times gently mocks Hayden’s spooky poise and socially awkward expressions of faith, but there is little doubt that she takes Hayden’s beliefs and values very seriously.
A sweet, sometimes zany message-centered tale; this is the first in a promised series chronicling the squeaky-clean adventures of the Hazard clan.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-7157-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: WaterBrook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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