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I WAS HOWARD HUGHES

Name: I WAS HOWARD HUGHES
Author: Steven Carter
ISBN: 1-58234-375-6

by Steven Carter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2003

A darkly diverting, slightly cautionary tale about a barmy billionaire and his batty biographer.

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First-novelist Carter hits the scene with a madly inventive mock bio.

Alton Reece, our narrator, is a rogue biographer. We sense this early, and eerily, in his quirky life of Howard Hughes. The glamorous Reece uses his Acknowledgements to snipe at Knopf, hint at an affair with a research assistant, and shrug off a flap involving the Hughes Archive (“Neither my assistants nor I did anything wrong and that’s all there is to say”). He then vows in the Introduction to prove that Hughes, notwithstanding his tragically eccentric last years, “was still a great man.” If the ensuing chapters prove anything, it’s that Hughes was also a great aviator and adulterer. Oh, the feats! Part of the joke, of course, is that Carter, no less than Reece, exploits Hughes’s bizarre life in order to snare readers. And it’s enormously effective. Hughes pursues and punishes his women with equal folly—landing a plane on the fairway to picnic with a golfing Kate Hepburn, rigging a Mercedes to fall apart beneath a departing Ava Gardner. How much of this is true? The fun is in the guessing. Much of it, to be sure, is sham. Reece relies on fishy diaries, letters, and memos (drivers receive minute instructions from Hughes on how to transport his contracted actresses without jarring their breasts). A Quotations chapter has everyone from Cary Grant to Richard Nixon weighing in on Hughes. But the true power of this tale lurks within transcripts of the research interviews. Conducted by Reece, these interviews hold subtle clues to his worsening mental state; through them, we glimpse a writer hell-bent on hagiography, rash to identify with his subject (he sees in Hughes a fellow traveler on the sea of bad press). Carter’s originality and, above all, deceptive moderation bring to mind Nathanael West’s coolly surreal satires of American obsession.

A darkly diverting, slightly cautionary tale about a barmy billionaire and his batty biographer.

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2003

ISBN: 1-58234-375-6

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
FAMOUS WRITERS SCHOOL
by Steven Carter

- BOOK REVIEW
HE'S SCARED, SHE'S SCARED
by Steven Carter & Julia Sokol

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.