ANGIE'S STORY

Name: ANGIE'S STORY
Author: Steve Weintz
ISBN: 978-0985092719

by Steve Weintz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 29, 2012

A taut, lurid account of the lowest levels of American life that probes behind the mask of propriety and raises questions...

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In Weintz’s debut novel, Angie Ferguson, a divorced, 38-year-old mother of five, quits her job flipping burgers to become a prostitute, upping her income but further reducing her self-esteem.

Descriptions of nightly sex sessions in seedy motels are set against the backdrop of Little Rock, Ark., a steaming cauldron of Baptist hypocrisy and Y2K hysteria. Nearly everyone gets screwed good and hard in this book, literally and figuratively, though it seems that the innocent and good-hearted get it harder than the corrupt and downright evil. Tom, a lonely, lovesick corporate drudge, fields the worst of it as he tries to help Angie rise up from a life on her back to transform their relationship from hooker and john to husband and wife. But Angie’s hooked on the irresistible lure of money and sex; she becomes as much predator as prey. A Dreiseresque novel of freewheeling American desperation, corruption and screw-thy-neighbor money-madness updated for the age of Internet porn, Weintz’s book teems with graphic sex scenes—singles, couples, trios and larger agglutinations, including a Thanksgiving-night gangbang at a rural Arkansas hunting club described by Angie as “twenty-five or thirty mostly overweight, middle-aged, liquored-up businessmen away from the wife and kids, screwing me.” Also present throughout the text: sudden and equally uninhibited violence. Humorous asides offer occasional breaks from the grim assembly line of fornication for hire. Between tricks, Angie and her coworkers take in episodes of Days of Our Lives while chain-smoking Winston Lights. Their boss, Gloria, a “whore-mistress … with bleached blonde hair” who likes to remind the talent that “the customer comes first,” wears a “turquoise jumper that plunges in the front, exposing most of her double-D breasts that stand out like vine-ripened Big Boy cantaloupes.” Weintz’s writing is crisp and sharp as he stylishly unfolds the doomed love story of Angie and Tom. For some, though, the explicit sex in this novel may be shocking—if there’s anyone left to shock, that is.

A taut, lurid account of the lowest levels of American life that probes behind the mask of propriety and raises questions about the line between emotional and physical love.

Pub Date: Feb. 29, 2012

ISBN: 978-0985092719

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Steven B. Weintz

Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.