An overlong novel with a shortage of insights and excess of aimless sentences.
Rezia’s (Room 11, 2017, etc.) novel offers a story of corporate greed that’s part satire and part redemption tale.
Renowned author Vittal Choudhary receives a letter from editor Nuria Friedman, proposing that he write a memoir about his 15 years working for Enterprise, a defunct “corporate health consultancy,” and hinting she’ll reward him with sex if he succeeds. Their letters, a tangle of overblown prose, have a satirical feel that suggests that this will be a jaundiced, humorous novel about corporate life. After Vittal accepts the offer, what follows is his story of life at Enterprise, which is more like a cult than a business, with job titles such as “Confrère,” “Father,” and “Truth Leader.” Vittal’s hero is Peter, one of Enterprise’s top dogs, whom he renames “Peter-Moses”: “I knew that I wanted to be kissing his arse and joining his cult of self, the club of the quintessential alpha males.” This is a world of manufactured acronyms, 22-hour work days, and nonstop jet-setting. Vittal and his colleagues are people who “feared being average, being forgotten. Men who feared not fearing anymore because fear drove them.” In truth, no one at Enterprise has a clue, instead relying on instinct, nonsensical pronouncements, and parroting clients’ briefs to bluster their way to big fees. London-based author Rezia has previously worked as an investment research writer and management consultant, and her fluency in business-speak makes for realistically baffling utterances. However, it soon appears that messy verbiage is the norm throughout—a vortex of prose that spins around in circles while avoiding significant action. For example, at Enterprise, Vittal falls for two different colleagues but repeatedly fails to follow through on these feelings. Interleaved with Vittal’s tale are further letters between author and editor and a series of anonymous encounters between lovers whose identities are a mystery for readers to solve. As the plot lurches back and forth, though, the characters never come to life, and the rare moments of real drama lack sufficient impact.
An overlong novel with a shortage of insights and excess of aimless sentences.Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9956317-7-9
Page Count: 414
Publisher: mari.reiza
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2017
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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