An imaginative ensemble comedy for readers with twisted senses of humor.
Poltergeists and country music converge in Hager’s surreal debut novel.
Willard is 12 years old, overweight, and doesn’t do very much with his life. His parents are obsessed with NASCAR and pay little attention to him. One day, he begins to type at his laptop and suddenly finds that he’s channeling the spirit of a recently murdered country singer named Jared Whaley. Soon, other people in Willard’s tiny town of Wilson, Tennessee, are wondering whether the boy is really communing with the dead or if the whole thing is just a hoax. Harvey Boyd, an uncharismatic radio host for WTOR, “Wilson Tennessee’s Only Radio,” decides to investigate the case, and his coverage quickly wins global attention. The town is turned upside down as locals try to make sense of the supernatural event—and also try to figure out who shot Jared Whaley through the head. Although much of Hager’s novel comes off as an extended redneck joke, it’s surprisingly funny, and his prose is filled with wit, double-entendres, and social commentary. He lovingly creates his Tennessee town from the bar to the barbershop, and his plot gleefully pokes fun at deadbeat parents, lowbrow pastimes, and sexism and homophobia in small-town America. As Hager notes in his epilogue, many of the events in Whaley’s life are culled from the author’s own, giving this absurd tale an autobiographical twist. Along the way, Hager valuably describes the music industry and its abusive relationship with artists, as well as the bleak origins of many country singers. Although the novel’s final courtroom scene drags on too long, its finale is a genuine shocker, and readers will find its twist deeply satisfying. In the end, Hager pulls off a rare feat: his flawed characters are often selfish and abrasive, yet it’s fun to read about every one of them.
An imaginative ensemble comedy for readers with twisted senses of humor.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4922-7029-4
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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