Lucas's best stories (Evenings at Mongini's, 1991) found a beauty and human grace even in the very deepest heart of squalor. In his first novel, however, his earlier talents and considerable energies are writ large, not small: in the broad strokes of this ambitious satire that takes on an entire century's depravity and greed. When poor but handsome Laszlo Gabor (born 1957) grows up in the south end of London, he thinks that the poor but sexy Hungarian ÇmigrÇ Maya Gabor really is his mother. By book's and Laszlo's end, however, when Laszlo isn't even 30, he'll not only know that Maya isn't his mom, but he'll know plenty more about the way the crime- driven, sex-drenched, and coincidence-packed world of his family background has really wagged. Things get moving when Laszlo takes a job at the First Nagaski and Waikiki Trust in London, and when Maya's current lover—the charmingly crank Hindu mystic, Bunny Selveratnam—heads for America (known here as Terra-stricken) to make his way as a messiah. In Hollywood (a.k.a. Honkeyville), Bunny falls into the clutches of aged sex idol and film star Medusa O'Toole and her even more aged lover and producer, Sham Shilverman- -a duo through whose ``influence'' Bunny (he's a professional regurgitator) becomes a smuggler of hot properties (swallowed, then delivered) for the international crime-and-finance ring known as Spillano Garbage. While Bunny edges closer to his doom, and Spillano Garbage secretly leverages out First Nag and Waik Trust, our rising hero Laszlo becomes a jet-setter on the lam, eventually finding (and how) his real mom and dad, and discovering that his family line goes back through Medusa O'Toole to Teddy Roosevelt (a.k.a Tusker Ruseveldt) and, through one Princess Lola D'Aoili, to Mussolini (``the most powerful cock in Italy''). Candide and Tom Jones repackaged as comic apocalypse for the late 20th century: ingeniously and remarkably inventive, but be prepared, too, for the numbing effect of the long cartoon.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-75965-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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
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