A rock novel good enough to wish you had an accompanying soundtrack.
Seattle rocker Laura Loss, one-time teen bass player in her brother's successful early-'80s hardcore punk band SCC, recalls her ascent to grunge queen—and her descent into rock tabloid infamy—as drummer of the legendary '90s band the Mistakes.
Inspired by the spectacular rise and tragic demise of Nirvana, McMahon's first novel skillfully captures two rock movements. Brief flashbacks of SCC, whose story ends when Laura's stage-diving brother Anthony is brutally beaten by a skinhead, are interwoven with the story of the Mistakes, the accidental band that brings her out of retirement. She's working in a coffee shop when she meets two flannel-shirted, SCC-loving hayseeds from Montana: Sean, a withdrawn soul and genius guitarist who sees sounds as colors, and Nathan, a singer and bassist with a gift for writing intense lyrics about their messy lives. We see Laura go from being a reluctant den mother who agrees to help "the boys" start up a group to excited participant in the trio's unique, razor-edged sound—and sexual partners with Sean, whom she doesn't love, and then Nathan, whom she does. On the verge of making it big, the band derails following a physical altercation with a label executive. They sign with a label with troublesome commercial designs and discover that Sean, whose signature move is to fall from a height onto his guitar, isn't the same guitarist after he sobers up. Haunted by the fate of her brother, who remains in a vegetative state, Laura is determined to save Sean from a bad fate but ultimately can't—any more than she can save herself from being held bitterly accountable for the end of the Mistakes. McMahon stays in an enviable comfort zone: He never strains for effect or tries to sell his characters as myths, as much as they may resonate with the Kurt Cobains and Courtney Loves of the world. His female narration is so good, there is a Lorrie Moore–ness to Laura's intelligence, self-awareness and self-deprecating wit. And the descriptions of the performances give you a feel for why fans went crazy over the Mistakes.
A rock novel good enough to wish you had an accompanying soundtrack.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-65854-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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