The funniest material is on the edges of the central parody: an ad to sell “magic dirt” to the elderly, a spoof editorial...
A parody of a superhero comic book, based on an animated series done for Saturday Night Live.
Smigel pokes fun at our four living ex-presidents, and uses all the conventions of the form: the bold lettering, the painful alliteration, the cheesy ads, and even the fine print on the copyright page. But the addition here of gratuitous x-rated material suggests the male adolescent level of humor—and it’s not even on a par with the best work in that vein, say, South Park or Beavis and Butthead. Taking off from standard “origins” episode, Smigel and company establish that “the fabulous foursome for right against might” gain their super powers in a freak electrical storm, and find it a welcome change from fishing and building houses for the poor. Joining at “a place of solitude where humans never venture” (i.e., the Ford Library), they decide to display their skills at carnivals and on Fox TV. Eventually, Henry Kissinger reveals to them their true destiny: to save mankind from a grand cabal of evil that includes everyone from Castro and Quaddafi to Reptilio and Electro Brain. This coalition of aliens and communists plants spy chips in Barbara Walters’s brain, and takes hostage Bill Gates (“the nebula’s nerdiest native”). After smoking crack, they steal the Statue of Liberty and other national monuments. But the ex-presidents save the day.
The funniest material is on the edges of the central parody: an ad to sell “magic dirt” to the elderly, a spoof editorial page, and scenes in which the presidents break out into a groovy rock band. But the graphics are substandard—a hurried conversion from their low-tech style on television, where this third-rate material was mildly amusing at best.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-78362-8
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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