A haunting and keenly observed meditation on relationships, parenthood, and the vagaries of celebrity and fame.
After his girlfriend discovers she is pregnant, a screenwriter and director experiences something that may be a miracle in this novel.
In the 1980s, David Lang captured the cult movie zeitgeist with the low-budget Zombie Film School. The work’s success brought fame, fortune, and marriage to an actress named Rosamundo. Two sequels follow, but by the mid-1990s, David’s marriage ends and he moves to California with his girlfriend, Holly Markham, and works as a script doctor. A writer and singer, Holly enchants David with her beauty and intelligence. In late 1998, Holly discovers she is unexpectedly pregnant. At age 42, she figures this may be her last opportunity to become a mother, but she is ambivalent about the prospect of parenthood. One night, David has a vision of an ethereally beautiful young girl at the head of their bed. The vision is brief but profound, and he wonders if he has seen an angel. While they struggle to decide whether to continue with the pregnancy, David prepares to turn his film script The Blemish into a play. When circumstances prompt them to return to New York, David and Holly are faced with pivotal choices that will affect the future of their relationship. The latest novel from Fife (The 13th Boy, 2014, etc.) is a thoughtful and compulsively readable portrait of a man facing intense changes in his career and life. Told through David’s journal entries and excerpts from his unfinished novel, Accident of Nature, the narrative is inventive and fast-paced. The tale primarily centers on David and Holly and the effect of her pregnancy on their relationship. The question of whether or not to have the baby is complicated by Holly’s struggle with depression. Her story is explored with candor and nuance as her moods shift wildly on a daily basis. In one poignant moment, Holly tells her doctor, “I’m just trying not to drown.” David’s experiences as a script doctor and his efforts to revive his career with the play The Blemish provide well-timed, darkly comic moments.
A haunting and keenly observed meditation on relationships, parenthood, and the vagaries of celebrity and fame.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61457-246-6
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Cune
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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