Fairy-tale breakthroughs to riches and fame, on-the-spot reversals, melodramatic unmaskings, interpolated scenes written as...
Toronto copywriter Dunford’s first novel, original published in Canada in 1998, presents the allegedly hilarious misadventures of an aspiring Toronto screenwriter.
Three weeks a month, Mitchell Draper labors as an office temp; the rest of the time, he slaves over pornographic sketches he sells to gay magazines and such ennobling screen projects as Hell Hole. One fine day he gets a call from nouvelle producer Carmen Denver, who thinks despite his lack of credits that he’s just the guy to write the screenplay for her first film, A Time for Revenge, the saga of a Mafia princess determined to make her father pay for his misdeeds. Mitchell’s ensuing roller-coaster alternation between conviction that the scenes he’s writing to Carmen’s measure are brilliantly successful and his certainty that her criticisms are right on target and he’ll never be a screenwriter is the best thing about this Horatio Alger update. The worst is the mirror-image of Mitchell’s manic-depression: Dunford’s vision of Toronto as a town in which every passerby looks just like a movie star, and every coffee-shop manager is secretly waiting to break through as a painter or actor. When Mitchell’s exuberant paranoia about whether Carmen is really on the up-and-up after all, and why she’s being trailed by a man who’s the spitting image of Antonio Banderas, combines with Dunford’s split-level group portrait of Mitchell’s friends Ingrid and Ramir as menials and little businesspeople just waiting for their chance to become the stars the rest of the cast so closely resembles, the result has all the coy depth of an extended game of Spot the Celebrity.
Fairy-tale breakthroughs to riches and fame, on-the-spot reversals, melodramatic unmaskings, interpolated scenes written as unfailingly good-natured screen dialogue: Dunford provides everything for a sitcom pilot except the laugh track—and the laughs.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-55583-582-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Alyson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
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
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
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