If Holden’s novel lacks a bit of depth, it is redeemed by the contagious pleasure had in skewering Hollywood hotties and...
This British cupcake of a novel throws a wholesome nanny into the terrifying world of Hollywood agents, actors and hastily adopted African babies.
Holden, author of a number of light farces (The School for Husbands, 2007, etc.), assembles a large cast of, if not quite characters, at least punch lines, that gather in a slapstick climax under the Tuscan sun. Hollywood agent Mitch Masterson has convinced client Darcy Prince, scion of a venerable British acting family, to audition for Jack Saint’s latest sci-fi epic Galaxia. While Darcy’s star is on the rise, his other A-lister Belle Murphy, likened to a stick figure with balloons, is spiraling out of control. Teetering on stilettos with a growling Chihuahua tucked under her arm, Belle has been sent to London to revive her career by doing Shakespeare (and for good measure she’s adopted an African baby she’s named Morning). Enter Emma, a lovely, responsible young nanny—who has just been sacked from her last post when the scheming aristo-nanny Totty de Belvedere sneaks cocaine into Emma’s bag—whom Belle hires to do…absolutely everything. As plots would have it, everyone ends up in the Tuscan countryside—Darcy, Belle and gold-chained heartthrob Christian Harlow, to film Galaxia; Emma to care for Morning; Totty in care of the children she usurped from Emma; a paparazzi fed up with celebrities; and the Fitzmaurice family: father, an MP with a strangely randy constituency, mother, a batty social climber, and young son Orlando, who has had significant flirtations with Emma. Sex is on many a mind, but Darcy, the world’s only carb-consuming actress, would prefer a leisurely meal at hunky Marco’s hilltop restaurant, where the cheese is fresh, the bread crunchy and olive oil is drizzled over everything. She’s beginning to think the simple life of food and love is just what she’s after. In a smash-up finale of epic complications, all is happily resolved.
If Holden’s novel lacks a bit of depth, it is redeemed by the contagious pleasure had in skewering Hollywood hotties and coke-snorting aristocrats.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4022-3715-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing...
The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center stage, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town life from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.).
Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in “Pharmacy,” which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she’s not exactly patient with shy young people—or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in “Incoming Tide” with the news that her father, like Kevin’s mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in “Starving,” though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout’s rueful tales. The Kitteridges’ son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn’t come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive’s carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in “Winter Concert” has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal: aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout’s sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life’s pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, “It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6208-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
PERSPECTIVES
Anna may learn to laugh with, instead of at, Grey, but the constant lampooning leaves the reader numb.
Can a young, preternaturally successful corporate executive overcome his 50 shameful secrets to find true love?
Andrew Shaffer (Great Philosophers who Failed at Love, 2011), writing as Merkin, skewers both E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight in his debut novel. Both series are certainly ripe for parody, yet Shaffer misses a real opportunity by indulging in easy, crude jokes, rather than incisive satire. Shaffer’s Anna Steal, like James’ Anastasia Steele and Meyer’s Bella Swan, suffers from a relentless interior monologue. Unfortunately, she offers little in the way of thought or advice, but instead wonders how elevators work and gulps in awe of Mr. Grey. Anna meets Grey while interviewing him for Boardroom Hotties, the magazine her too-often-hung-over roommate writes for, and the attraction is instantaneous. Grey quickly seeks to acquire Anna, dazzling her with his wealth by purchasing Wal-Mart just to give her the afternoon off for a date, buying Washington State University just to relieve her of taking tests, flying her about in his fighter jets and helicopters, ordering two of everything on the room-service menu, and whisking her away to a private island. Yet Grey has “dangerous” secrets. Unlike Edward Cullen, who was a lethal vampire, or Christian Grey, who sought the perfect submissive for his domination, Earl Grey indulges in rather tame danger. His secrets include a fondness for spanking, swimming in silver thongs, dressing up as an elf, and decorating with black velvet paintings. Warning Anna about his kinky sexuality, he introduces her to his Room of Doom, where they play Bards, Dragons, Sorcery and Magick. More a Master of Dungeons and Dragons than BDSM, Grey shocks Anna not with his deviance but his self-delusions.
Anna may learn to laugh with, instead of at, Grey, but the constant lampooning leaves the reader numb.Pub Date: July 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-306-82199-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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