Awkward hybrid of thriller, farce, and environmental polemic. After two treatments of his relationship with his charismatic father Yul (a novel, The Ballad of Habit and Accident, 1980; Yul: The Man Who Would Be King, 1989), Brynner offers a comically improbable, name-dropping spoof involving a New York commercial publishing house reluctantly deciding to add to its fall list a pop-science eco-diatribe announcing the imminent, and unavoidable, extinction of the human race. Terry Bancroft, a mildly neurotic, Smith College Gen-X editorial assistant who, with two years in the business, has already learned to loath all authors, knows that egghead-penned gloom-and-doomers have uneven track records. But when she glances at the first few pages of the unsolicited manuscript of The Doomsday Report, she finds, of course, that she can’t put it down. When her fatuous boss seems unimpressed by her enthusiasm, Bancroft slips copies to Commonwealth’s backbiting editorial board, where the graying, sincere, conveniently widowed CEO Franco Sherman decides that the book has great potential, especially after the be-ribboned US General Shriever warns him that powerful, unnamed forces want it squelched. News of the irreversible end of life, scheduled for 2050, makes Bancroft ditch her sexually monotonous Capitol Hill boyfriend for Sherman’s perversely paternal advances. Doomsday, naturally, conquers the best-seller lists, inspiring people of every stripe to do wild, wacky, murderous things as the end of the world looms. All of this is wonderfully hilarious, and would be just fine if Brynner didn’t take himself so seriously, swamping his campy satire and insider jokes in a self- indulgent flood of eco-dreck that, we eventually discover, might not be as accurate as it sounds. A witty premise mired in tedious, journalistic pessimism about Mother Nature’s numerous aches and pains. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 4, 1998
ISBN: 0-688-15919-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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