Readers aren’t likely to buy it. Our suggestion: Skim this one if you must, then pop some corn and watch the film version of...
Nostalgia, sentimentality and irreverent comedy redeem a paper-thin plot in this latest from the veteran author of The Exorcist and later fiction (Dimiter, 2010, etc.).
It’s a monologue performed (as if in a standup routine) by a retired octogenarian Hollywood screenwriter, Peruvian-American Joey El Bueno. While politely deflecting his Bellevue Hospital Nurse Bloor’s request for his evaluation of her screenplay idea (about Nazi scientists and Hitler’s preserved brain), Joey reminisces about his boyhood in New York City circa 1941, as a reluctant Catholic middle-school student, a devourer of pulp fiction and virtually every movie ever made and the accidental friend of a beautiful, eccentric older girl named Jane Bent, who attaches herself to him, becomes his self-appointed mentor and reappears mysteriously as herself and in other guises throughout Joey’s youth. Though we are made privy to his adventures with Jane, none of Joey’s schoolmates or buddies will even acknowledge her existence. The resulting mystery possesses and enriches Joey’s imagination, as he grows regretfully away from his almost saintly “Pop,” a long-widowed pushcart vendor, and into something quite like adulthood. Major problems: Jane disappears from the novel for many pages at a time; Joey/Blatty can’t seem to distinguish a good gag from a groaner; and the eventually revealed identity of Joey’s mystery girl/woman is a clumsy letdown that few readers will fail to see coming. Nevertheless, there are charmingly funny evocations of the 1939 New York World’s Fair and a revelatory day spent at Coney Island’s Luna Park. One appreciates the cameo appearance made by a Boy Scout troop leader who moonlights as a numbers runner—not to mention the schoolteacher nun who assigns an essay on the topic “Why St. Francis of Assisi Talked to Birds But Not Fish.” But Blatty stacks the deck with forced emphases on the figure of Jane (“There was this aura about her, something spiritual; ethereal, really.”).
Readers aren’t likely to buy it. Our suggestion: Skim this one if you must, then pop some corn and watch the film version of The Exorcist again.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2649-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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