Amusing and amiable to a fault, but Murphy (The Hope Valley Hubcap King, not reviewed) has a deft, light touch.
West Coast potboiler about a hapless New Jersey writer’s adventures in la-la-land.
Newark boy Frank Matthews is a fish out of water. The bright and ambitious progeny of an insane father and a social-climbing mother, Frank enrolled in a writing program and got it into his head to be a novelist. That was his first mistake. Then, spurning his uncle’s offer to deal him into the family’s dry-cleaning business, he fled Jersey for California, moving to Los Angeles to live with his aunt Clara, who offered nine months’ worth of room and board to help him get writing “out of his system.” Not making much headway on his novel in the land of bookstores called the Happy Booker and suburbs such as Trillion Oaks (the author tends to carry his West Coast parodies a bit too far), Frank is out for a walk one day on the Malomar Pier when he runs into Max Peterson, an old classmate from the writing program. Max is now a big success, having published a bestseller (City of Breasts) that has been optioned in Hollywood for a lot of dough, and he invites Frank to come to live on his Malomar estate. Frank thinks Max is a first-class blowhard and detests his writing, but he’s glad to get away from Aunt Clara and gladder still to be reunited with Max’s wife Magee, who was also a classmate—and an unrequited love of Frank’s. Malomar is an endless swirl of parties introducing Frank to a bizarre Gatsby-like set of poseurs and lunatics who deconstruct Rambo films and publish feminist tracts (Of Mice and Menstruation, etc.) for large advances and 22 minutes of fame. But, inspired by his rekindled love for Magee, Frank does start to make progress on his novel there, until she begins to return his affection. That proves to be a major distraction—along with the forest fires, earthquakes, and power outages that plague the region. Welcome to LA, Frank: You’ll never be the same again.
Amusing and amiable to a fault, but Murphy (The Hope Valley Hubcap King, not reviewed) has a deft, light touch.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-553-38244-6
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Delta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
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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