KNIFEBOY

Name: KNIFEBOY
Author: Tod Harrison Williams
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3821-9

by Tod Harrison Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2007

This mildly comic novel seems to have been written almost solely with an eye to film adaptation, probably an Adam Sandler...

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No, this debut novel is not about street gangs or plastic surgeons but about a door-to-door salesman involved in hypercompetitive cutlery sales.

Jay Hauser has just completed his first year at Dartmouth. He’s trying to decide what “cool” fraternity to join, but in the midst of this major life decision he has a summer to contend with. Challenged by a potential girlfriend that he’s not cut out to be a successful knife salesman because he’s not “charming” enough, he vows both to woo customers with his charm and to beat the competition. Working out of his home in the Detroit suburbs, Jay starts hitting up his divorced parents, his grandparents, his friends’ parents and even his maid, trying to persuade them all to purchase expensive sets of Bladeworks knives. He hones his selling strategies and even develops a few of his own outside the scripted ones provided by the company. Horatio Alger–like, after the first “push period” he finds himself as the most successful salesmen in his region. Jay’s response is to become even more competitive, hoping eventually to overtake Jorge Acuña from Puerto Rico or perhaps even the legendary Reid Tallenger, who’s made more than $800,000 over the course of his career. Bladeworks managers are so impressed by Jay’s sales record that they break precedent by inviting him to speak at one of the summer sales meetings, hoping he’ll inspire others during the traditionally slow days of late summer. (The motivational motto Jay comes up with is “Kick Ass in August.”) Meanwhile, Jay is trying to balance the demands of his social life by maintaining a sexual relationship with his girlfriend Brooke while pursuing Isabelle, a girl he’d originally tagged as “not hot enough.”

This mildly comic novel seems to have been written almost solely with an eye to film adaptation, probably an Adam Sandler vehicle.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4165-3821-9

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007

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.