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
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing...
The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center stage, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town life from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.).
Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in “Pharmacy,” which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she’s not exactly patient with shy young people—or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in “Incoming Tide” with the news that her father, like Kevin’s mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in “Starving,” though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout’s rueful tales. The Kitteridges’ son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn’t come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive’s carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in “Winter Concert” has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal: aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout’s sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life’s pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, “It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6208-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
PERSPECTIVES
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.
A bike shop owner and her book club pals keep solving mysteries in ways that somehow don’t endear them to the police (Murder on Cape Cod, 2018, etc.).
Mackenzie Almeida, the proprietor of Mac’s Bikes in the touristy Cape Cod town of Westham, is dating Tim Brunelle, the caring and handsome owner of an artisanal bakery, who wants to get married and start a family. That’s not something independent neat freak Mac is ready to do. She enjoys living in her tiny house with Belle, her talkative parrot, for company. When Mac and her best friend, Gin, come across the dead body of wealthy Beverly Ruchart outside Gin’s taffy shop, Mac’s romantic problems get put on the back burner, especially since Gin is a suspect. She and her date, Eli Tubin, the widower of Beverly’s daughter, had attended a party at Beverly’s home only the night before. Beverly seems to have died from a heart attack, but an autopsy finds that she was poisoned with antifreeze, some of which has been planted in Gin’s garage. Of course Mac and her cohorts at the book club can’t resist a little sleuthing. They uncover several other plausible suspects: Beverly’s ne’er-do-well grandson, Ron, his Russian girlfriend, and his long-absent father, who has a police record. Although Beverly could be generous, she had a sharp tongue that made her plenty of enemies. Her interest in genealogy and reuniting long-lost parents and children endeared her to Wesley Farnham, for whom she found a son, but not so much to Farnham’s daughter, who misses being an only child. Although Mac turns her findings over to the police, she still attracts the killer’s notice and ends up owing her life to Belle.
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1508-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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