In 23 stories, poems, and jottings, the fifties teen icon gets the full treatment hitherto reserved for Peabody and Ebersole's Mondo tributes to Elvis, Barbie, and Marilyn. Ever since his death at 24 in a car crash, the essence of Dean's cult standing has always been his unfinished status, his promise cut short so young, so it makes sense for the authors to use unusual freedom in reinventing him. Michael Hemingson takes him deep into Anne Rice territory; Stephanie Hart entangles him with the gorgeously misunderstood Cal Trask; Lewis Shiner shows that it's Dean, not Elvis, who had run-ins with space aliens; Jack C. Haldeman imagines him as a race-car driver (with Sal Mineo as his Boy Wonder mechanic and Natalie Wood as a pert Saturday Evening Post reporter); Louisa Ermelino packs him off to modern-day Afghanistan; and James Finney Boylan, in the volume's most amusing conceit, unmasks him as Jimmy Dean, the Sausage King. For a (barely) different point of view, try David Plumb's sketch of Dean's fictitious son, Michael Marton's testimonial from his high-school English teacher, Hilary Howard's discovery that Dean is her new guardian angel (``You are hereby free of all your neurotic hang-ups. Have a cigarette''), or Bentley Little's search for the lug wrench Dean tossed out of the frame in Rebel Without a Cause. All through these pieces, though—and in the excerpts from Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Edwin Corley's Farewell My Slightly Tarnished Hero, and the poems by Ai, Reuben Jackson, Tino Villanueva, and Terence Winch—the tabula rasa is remarkably consistent: a surly yet sensitive sex machine mounted on fast cars or cycles, alienated as all getout. In fact, the immitigably 50's Dean is so stiff and unyielding in story after story that all too often he seems like an interloper at his own homage.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14121-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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