Beautiful women and gangsters, movie stars and dictators all rub shoulders in this delicious tongue-in-cheek debut set in 1920s Hollywood.
There’s a young guy in a tux on the pier in Venice, outside Los Angeles; he’s our narrator, Brae Orrack, an odd duck on a quixotic mission to find true love and fend off a deadly curse placed on him by his father, the Great Orrack. They are both “magic men,” and Brae is about to perform his one trick, turning stones into bees. Laugh if you like, but the trick will get him out of life-threatening jams down the road. It’s Lily who gets him out of his current jam (no rent money); she’s a would-be actress and fellow lodger at their boardinghouse. She sends him to a “repairman” at Paramount, who hires Brae to nursemaid their new star Gary Cooper and see that Coop’s womanizing doesn’t get him into trouble. Fat chance. Soon enough, a jilted Lupe Velez is threatening Coop with a knife (Brae disarms her), and the equally jilted Clara Bow is attempting suicide. These are sideshows. The real deal is femme fatale Nell Devereaux, flier and mountain climber. Both men fall for her, Brae believing that here indeed is true love. It’s too bad Nell is the plaything of Cuban dictator General Machado, who’s involved with notorious gangster Owney Madden. Coop and Brae will pursue her to an offshore gambling ship where, amazingly, Brae saves Madden’s life. This will earn him an even more dangerous assignment—working for Owney—that takes him to Key West in a puddle-jumper. Base works his own magic as he crisply choreographs the entrances and exits of his large cast. There will be thrills aplenty before we are done, and disillusionment but never defeat for the resilient Brae. Do we believe him? “Have you ever had reason to doubt me?” he asks. It’s the last line. You can see the big wink.
A page-turner, spiffy and irresistible.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-32809-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY | HISTORICAL FICTION
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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