Candide in modern drag: British actor Everett's first novel retails the naughty adventures of a pill-popping, omnisexual naif as he cruises a jet-set world in which everything, especially him, is for sale. Still smarting from his childhood discovery of the male member that will prevent him from becoming a Great Actress, and warmed by his fonder memories of his early days as a precocious male prostitute, onetime soap-opera star Rhys Waveral is living on, and living it up, in a suite at the Hotel Leicester in Paris—until his father, Brigadier Dimbleby (``Dim'') Waveral, phones with the news that Rhys's financial advisor, ``that bloody deviant, Gavin Winterton,'' has just sold him short in the stock market crash of '87. What to do? With stoic sighs, Rhys (a.k.a. Dorhys, Dorita, Lady Beth Fraser, etc.) runs off on his lovely, accident-prone wife Adrienne to return to his old profession, agreeing to accompany hideous Rikki Lancaster, ``the Duchess,'' and her lesbian medium companion, Elida Schumann, to Tangiers for a week of torrid, expensive passion. As Dim takes off for Paris to have it out with his wayward son, and Rhys's friend Peach Delight takes it on herself to dazzle him with Ecstasy and dÇcolletage, Rhys plunges into a furious carnival of grotesques—from Sir Maurice Goodbuns to Little Beige Riding Hood—all coming together (so to speak) for a memorable climax at Ashby de la Zouche's costume extravaganza, the 1988 Fruit Ball. Since Everett hasn't Joe Orton's command of the mechanics of farce, Rhys's riotous, in-your-face odyssey finally comes across as sad and a little boring. But readers hungry for the latest sex-and- drugs update on the too-too beautiful people, darling, could make this a hit anyway.
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-11786-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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