A masterful, modern-day fantasy of millionaires and madmen, fathers and sons, reality and dreams.
The author of I’m Losing You (1996) slices open the self-satisfied bosom of Los Angeles yet again in his third novel, a sprawling family saga that trades the usual mush-mouthed sentimentalities for cascading shards of knife-edged vignettes.
Wagner sets up his cast with masterly ease. The closest thing we have to a protagonist is 12-year-old Toulouse (Tull) Trotter, who walks his mighty Dane, Pullman, around his sidewalk-less Bel-Air neighborhood. His mother Trinnie (short for Katrina) has been sober all of six months and still seems to be crashing from the weight of having husband Marcus up and disappear one night just after they were married. The vine-choked ruins of the house and garden built for the couple by her richer-than-Croesus father, Louis Trotter, still stand nearby the sprawling estate where she and Tull live with Grandpa Lou. Tull forms a tight, spoiled knot of jet-setting junior-high privilege with his cousins: Lucy, a tense trend-monger who’s deeply in love with Tull and sticks her nose into everyone’s affairs under the guise of researching a novel she’ll never write; and Edward, a young genius, born physically deformed by the effects of Apert’s Syndrome, who designs and sews the Taymor-esque masks and hoods he wears. Their world is momentarily punctured by meeting another young teenager, Amaryllis, who is tossed into the hellish machinery of juvenile placement after her drug-addicted mother dies. The cousins do what they can to help Amaryllis while Tull and Lucy search for Marcus, whom Trinnie had claimed until recently was dead. There are ample moments here for easy satiric thrusts, but, happily, Wagner keeps his focus on his people. Meanwhile, his prose is looping and elegant, yet thoroughly grounded in the day-to-day vernacular of southern California’s self-obsessed elite. If Bret Easton Ellis had immersed himself for several years in 18th-century tales of the decadent French aristocracy, picking up a few hints from Michael Tolkin along the way, this is what you might get.
A masterful, modern-day fantasy of millionaires and madmen, fathers and sons, reality and dreams.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-50002-2
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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