Unspeakably and endlessly funny. Unless you’re a former president.
Wicked humorist Buckley shoots fish in a barrel and makes them dance.
The targets in this sendup of Washington—trial lawyers, first families, Court TV, MSNBC, Dan Rather, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the American appetite for the awful—are the last decade’s scandals, which, rather than being gluey and unbearable in the reheating, are even more fun this time around. The setup is the death of America’s philanderer-in-chief Ken McMann after an exhausting round of hide the salami with songwriter, mother of mercy to the Middle East, and extremely generous campaign donor Babette Van Anka in the Lincoln bedroom. The game was complicated by the strange refusal of the executive salami to de-tumesce, and US president made it back to his own bedroom in the small hours only to run into the buzzsaw of a wide-awake Elizabeth Tyler “Beth” McMann, First Lady of the Land. There was the usual and, considering the situation, thoroughly justifiable screaming fight, but the couple eventually tucked in for the night. Alas, dawn revealed a dead president and, since the presidential forehead bore the imprint of Paul Revere’s mark from the bottom of the sterling spittoon hurled by Mrs. M., the new First Widow is charged with murder. To her rescue comes Boyce “Shameless” Baylor, America’s top trial lawyer, the man who successfully defended athletic wife murderer J. J. Bronco. It’s not the first meeting for Beth and Boyce. Before she threw him over for handsome, hard-charging war hero Ken McMann in law school, Beth and Boyce had been an item. And, although it was she who picked up the phone and called for help, she can’t help wondering whether, being still a little sore at her, he might throw the match. But Baylor’s competitive instincts are as unquenchable as the late president’s lust, and Beth is still a dish. The battle is joined. It’s a lulu.
Unspeakably and endlessly funny. Unless you’re a former president.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-50734-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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