Disposable, ephemeral navel-gazing.
Chatterbox self-help whiz melts down when her shrink blows town.
No stranger to confessional literature, memoirist Shapiro (Only As Good As Your Word, 2007, etc.) ventures into the world of fiction with predictably ostentatious results. The author’s doppelgänger is Julia Goodman, a wealthy Manhattan quasi-celebrity married to Jake, who’s always jetting off to film TV pilots. Julia made herself famous with Up In Smoke, a tell-all about her addiction to booze and nicotine that revealed how her therapist, Dr. Michael Ness, helped her conquer her compulsions. (The book as described bears a striking resemblance to Shapiro’s own Lighting Up, 2004.) On the eve of the publication of her sequel, Food Crazy, she finds herself abandoned by the people she relies on most. Jake is off to film in Hollywood; best friend Sarah is following a new husband to Cleveland; and Dr. Ness drops the bomb that he’s moving to Arizona. “What a disaster—I’m an acclaimed self-help guru who suddenly can’t help herself,” Julia whimpers. Fretting over her abrupt loss of a counselor/father figure, she visits eight other analysts in eight days, finally settling on a cigar-smoking behavioral therapist who can’t fill his predecessor’s big shoes. For our addiction-prone heroine, nothing fills the void like cupcakes, and she packs on 35 pounds just in time to freak out over her upcoming slate of media appearances, including a shot at Oprah. Shapiro’s prose has its attractions, among them a clean, easy-to-digest style and dialogue so hurried it reads like a spiritual cousin to Aaron Sorkin’s walk-and-talks. What will spoil this light beach read for many readers is its whiny protagonist, a woman so self-centered that her biggest obstacle is getting over herself. The novel’s appeal may well be limited to those who are really into drama queens.
Disposable, ephemeral navel-gazing.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-58156-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
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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