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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

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FAMOUS WRITERS SCHOOL
by Steven Carter

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

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.