A sometimes-funny but uninventive sendup of the current president of the United States.
A satirical depiction of President Donald Trump’s personal correspondence.
Debut author Hess, a pseudonymous New York City–based journalist, says in a fictional introduction that he was anonymously contacted last year, via email, by someone who claimed to possess a storehouse of Trump’s personal letters—all written in 2018—and was willing to share them. The bulk of the book is an assemblage of these fanciful missives—38 in all—mostly written to people who’ve figured prominently in the drama of Trump’s tenure. Hess’ version of Trump bitterly attacks lawyer Michael Cohen, adult-film actor Stormy Daniels, and comedian “Rosanne” [sic] Barr and mercilessly taunts Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and President Emmanuel Macron of France, whom he calls a “crybaby.” He also gushes fawningly about his “buddy,” Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hess addresses Trump’s notorious complaints about “fake news,” his contention that climate change is a hoax, and the threat that he asserts that Mexican immigrants pose to the nation. Some of the epistles have a more personal tone—one, written to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is unsettlingly creepy. The author is at his best when he departs from the predictable highlights of the daily news cycle, as when he has Trump counsel Allah: “I think if you want to surpass the Christian God in a jiffy, you should have a daughter as soon as possible.” Also, he adeptly captures the idiosyncrasies of Trump’s speech as well as his relentless penchant for self-aggrandizement. In one of the book’s funniest moments, the president boasts of his popularity in a note to God, wondering if “wiping two or three countries off the face of this earth” would cement his own immortality. Hess’ irreverent work refreshingly makes light of a presidency that’s long been a tinderbox of angry contention. However, for the most part, he aims for obvious jokes and well-worn punchlines. This familiarity transforms into tedium very quickly, as the author seems more interested in heaping scorn on Trump than he is in earning laughs from readers.
A sometimes-funny but uninventive sendup of the current president of the United States.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9768354-5-5
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Irokopost Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
