Like a few of her once-celebrated contemporaries, Janowitz is proving to be a one-book phenomenon. After the hype-helped success of Slaves of New York came the thunderous bomb of A Cannibal in Manhattan. And now, this equally inept episodic tale of contemporary Manhattan—a belabored satire on modern romance, or the lack of it. The heroine of this dizzy saga is Pamela Trowel, a lonelyheart who lives in a grotesque basement apartment and works at a hunting magazine. She considers herself ``ponderous and dumpy and unpleasant,'' and the people she meets seem to agree with this assessment. But they're a bunch of weirdos also: Her boss, the social-climbing editor; the publisher, a sexually repressed married man who trembles a lot; Martin Feuery, a shrink who conducts office hours in a bar; and so on. Pamela's also being pursued by a fellow of strange nationality named Alby. But things take a turn for the stranger when Pamela informally adopts a boy who shows up at her door, an adolescent named Abdhul who's street-smart and lovable. Meanwhile, Pamela's divorced parents hover on the periphery, her mother a professor of Psychic Phenomena, her father a profligate sperm-donor. Pamela's increasing paranoia leads her to Maine with Abdhul. When she returns to the city, she comes back in drag and discovers that life is so much better for men. Along the way, there are all sorts of subplots involving a disembodied head, a Palestinian terrorist bomb, and a millionairess who makes love with a bag on her head. Janowitz strains to remind us that ``Abnormality was the norm'' and ``There was no objective reality.'' Stylistic and grammatical lapses aside, Janowitz commits the greatest sin for a comic novelist—she's just not funny.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-517-58698-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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