Rodi (Drag Queen, 1995, etc.) takes a shot a being the gay Moliäre and succeeds in pulling off a smart, funny, and terrifically entertaining farce. Dennis Racine, 31, is the title's kept boy, the constant companion, since he was 15, of Farleigh Nock, 63, a wealthy theatrical producer in Chicago. Dennis is pretty self-satisfied, though vaguely wary of loosing his hunky good looks. Living with Farleigh in the producer's large house, sharing space with Farleigh's former kept boy (a queenish Greek named Christos, who does the cooking) and spending Farleigh's endless supply of money, Dennis gets understandably worried when his master turns suddenly cool and distracted. Dennis is late to assume the worst, but when he finally gets a clue, it becomes swiftly apparent that he has a rival for Farleigh's largesse: Jasper Moran, a pool boy whom Farleigh has taken a shine to, going so far as to make him the director of a new staging of an Oscar Wilde play. After several strategies for winning back Farleigh's good graces fail miserably, Dennis conspires with his gigolo brain trust, who urge him to spirit Farleigh away to Greece, thereby freeing him from Jasper's youthful clutches. The farcical quality of the story really takes over once the cast is relocated to the Aegean: Christos begins to act almost butch; a couple of American girls (including Jasper's old girlfriend) join the party—and Jasper shows up. What follows is a zany pilgrimage to the home of Jasper's Greek grandmother, who has violently little patience for fags, and further scheming from Dennis to sour Farleigh on Jasper. What happens after a desperate Dennis decides to seduce Jasper is predictable enough, but it in no way diminishes Rodi's high-speed, at times hilarious tale.
Pub Date: Nov. 25, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-93926-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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