A novel that exhibits flashes of rich humor and intelligence, yet never gels.
An interstate odyssey chronicling a brazen hero on a journey both scatological and transcendent.
When he comes home one day, Aaron Abrams finds his brother and wife making love in his pool. He dumps a bucket of cold water on their hot scene in protest, and thus the hero’s journey begins. Immediately packing his life into his car, he heads to New York and the big book-publishing deal he’s just scored. One of the first things we learn about Aaron is his obsession with Newman’s Own lemonade, a detail that Moffie (The Organ Grinder and the Monkey, 2008, etc.) is so charmed by that he never lets readers forget it. These initially funny quirks and some uneasily episodic encounters work overtime to sustain the protracted account of Aaron’s avoidance of his family’s dissolution. After a meeting with his hot lesbian agent, she throws him an assistant so taken by his writing that an immediate bedroom session ensues. Indeed Aaron experiences so many lurid sexual encounters during his sojourn that an Ian Fleming novel seems modest by comparison. In fact, so little attention is given to the central betrayal that Aaron and his world never properly take shape. Aaron travels cross-country gathering inspiration for his next masterpiece, but nowhere in his dialogue is it evident that he writes serious books for a living. Full of self-reverential references, jokes and conversations meant to flatter the hero or plug pop-culture favorites, the central story is often left in the dust–and Moffie’s intelligence and wit, which are on display, can’t make up for it. There are some memorable moments, but there is no settlement between story or attitude, and this vacillation dilutes both. Aaron’s unexpected battle with hemorrhoids makes for some painfully funny and frank passages, but just as he becomes human, he slips back into cipherhood, leaving him only to function as wish-fulfillment. The moods are admirably varied, but the book ends with a flavor so inappropriately saccharine that it’s not the completion of a full portrait of a man, just the symptom of a story without limits.
A novel that exhibits flashes of rich humor and intelligence, yet never gels.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-0461-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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