Breezy glimpse into the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of modern celebrity culture and the women’s-magazine business.
Dedicated editor-in-chief’s brilliant career goes into a tailspin after a flamboyant celebrity takes over her magazine, a plot that mirrors the litigious saga of Rosie (i.e., O’Donnell) magazine, to which former McCall’s editor Koslow bore witness.
Magnolia Gold might have been born Maggie Goldfarb in Fargo, N.D., but years in the magazine industry have polished her into an elegant Manhattanite who welcomes every day as chief tastemaker for Lady magazine. Sure, the somewhat staid women’s title could use a redesign, and that is exactly what Magnolia has planned when the word comes down from corporate that her beloved Lady is being transformed into Bebe, after popular, opinionated talk-show host Bebe Blake. Never mind that plus-sized, foulmouthed Bebe knows nothing about magazines, her addition is assumed to be an opportunity for the company to “mint money” and Magnolia is summarily demoted to a smaller office where she is called upon to execute Bebe’s vision, even if that includes an NRA-friendly cover shot that alienates the readership. The capricious Bebe is an unprofessional nightmare who shows up drunk to her own launch party and at one point tries to seduce a young male intern, but she is also capable of big-hearted surprise gestures, such as when she “gives” British actor Hugh Grant to Magnolia for her birthday. And as difficult as Magnolia’s position is, it is her oily CEO Jock Flanagan who really gives her trouble—ultimately firing her after she rejects his adulterous advances. Our unemployed heroine is then left to ponder her future as she fights for money owed her by her former corporate overlords, while simultaneously navigating her way through the tricky waters of dating. Perched on the sidelines, she then has a perfect view of the bittersweet dissolution of Lady/Bebe, and is forced to choose between the lesser of two evils when both Jock and Bebe call on her to testify in competing lawsuits against each other. Koslow’s zippy prose ably captures the manic intensity and not-always-glamorous world of New York magazines—even if classy Magnolia and her so-so love life are a bit of a snooze. Far more intriguing is the flawed maverick Bebe.
Breezy glimpse into the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of modern celebrity culture and the women’s-magazine business.Pub Date: April 19, 2007
ISBN: 0-399-15415-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© 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.
