Simon’s boring trivialization of Chicago politics is a major disappointment after the phenomenally good Pretty Birds.
Horse-trading and headcounts consume Chicago’s aldermen as they choose a successor to their murdered mayor in NPR host Simon’s second novel (Pretty Birds, 2005).
The African-American mayor has been found dead at his desk. This opening inevitably revives memories of Harold Washington, Chicago’s only black mayor, also found dead at his desk, in 1987, from a heart attack. However, Simon has added a twist: His mayor has been poisoned. Somebody sprinkled nicotine distillate on the mayor’s pizza. Perhaps sensing that crime writing is not his forte, Simon moves the investigation to the back burner; this is not a whodunit. Sunny Roopini, the protagonist, has been sworn in as acting interim mayor. The 48-year-old Sunny, the mayor’s protégé, is an immigrant from India. He has two teenage daughters; his wife was recently gunned down at a currency exchange (she was an innocent bystander). Old trouper that he is, the genial Sunny continues the glad handing he has perfected during his years on the council. His ward is one of the city’s most diverse, and Sunny is the very model of a multicultural alderman; he has even added Italian dishes to the menu at the Indian restaurant he owns. Food matters here; the characters plough their way through a heap of ethnic specialties. Ethnicity matters too, in this city of 100 languages. But there is no racial animosity: In Simon’s Chicago, there’s good-humored accommodation. This makes the competition among the 50 aldermen to become the next mayor about as exciting as a pillow fight. Simon’s attempts to whip up some excitement are lame; one leading contender has been filmed taking a bribe (he acquits himself honorably), another confesses to having had sex with two male cops, part of his security detail. The climax is an interminable roll-call vote.
Simon’s boring trivialization of Chicago politics is a major disappointment after the phenomenally good Pretty Birds.Pub Date: March 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6557-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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
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