The novel makes the point that all rock is kid’s music (“Aren’t we all just big kids?”) and makes it again and again.
A whimsical novel of the rock industry that frequently delights with its wry humor and insider’s knowledge but ultimately falls short of its promise.
Few would seem as qualified to write an incisive novel about the life of a touring musician as Stace. He initially attracted a cult following as a British singer-songwriter billed as John Wesley Harding and has also written three novels (by George, 2007, etc.) that attracted a readership beyond his music fans. He now seems to be bringing those two identities together, recording most recently under his own name and turning his novelistic attention to his experiences in the music industry. Not that this is thinly disguised memoir, for it details a parallel history of rock through the career arc of the fictitious Wonderkids, formed by two brothers (think Kinks, Oasis, Everlys) who discover that they fill a previously unknown niche: “Rock Music for Kids.” Or, with their hint of misbehavior, “Punk for kids. Punk for kids whose parents like punk. Music for kids with cool parents.” The band experiences its own version of pivotal moments in rock—Beatlemania, Altamont, an extended feud with the censoring Parents Music Resource Center (who term their seemingly playful music “one of the greatest evils facing America today”), a drug bust, a Jim Morrison–style indecent exposure incident, and the inevitable personnel changes, disbanding and reunion. The narrator, for reasons initially inexplicable, is a Dickensian urchin named Sweet who is adopted by the band (specifically frontman Blake Lear) to escape the tedium of his British boyhood. Sweet eventually figures more critically in the plot, but he seems like a contrivance, the coincidence of his meeting the band straining credulity, and his perspective is an odd one for telling this story. Yet the bigger problem with the novel, as with the touring rock life it depicts, is the tedium of repetition, the day-to-day-ness in which not much happens beyond stereotypes (manager, record execs, etc.) behaving like stereotypes while the author has some fun with obscure references (fans of Spirit, for example, will delight in the command to the bus driver: “Randy? California!”).
The novel makes the point that all rock is kid’s music (“Aren’t we all just big kids?”) and makes it again and again.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0801-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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