A 192-proof comedy for those with a taste for the hard stuff.
It’s fear and loathing in Walt Disney World as two gin-soaked slackers attempt to drown out the dying of their misspent youth with gallons of alcohol in Roberts’ novel.
Multimillionaire John “Johnny Boy” Apple is on a mission to hunt down the woman of his dreams and marry her before the clock finally ticks down on his wonderfully errant 20s. Because his parents died tragically in a plane crash on the way home from the Magic Kingdom when he was a kid, Johnny Boy figures Disney World is the place to make it all happen. His pal, Murray “Cheese” Marks, is the ultimate wingman, and so enamored of the rakishly handsome Johnny Boy that Cheese sometimes wonders if he might be gay. Overweight and unattractive, Cheese is the polar opposite of his childhood friend. He’s got a wife back home named Florence, who he probably shouldn’t have left alone; it isn’t long before she and Johnny Boy’s ex Kathy become lovers. But that’s just a peripheral concern for Cheese, who is much more focused on the new woman in his pal’s life, a sultry Southern belle named Virginia Wells whom Cheese has hopelessly fallen for (“I love Virginia Wells, and you and your big fat Cartier ring are going to suck the pale green light out of her countryside eyes”).
The complexity of Roberts’ off-kilter comedy makes perfect sense to each of the pickled protagonists, who have trapped themselves in the “happiest place on earth” and never stop drinking. (At least on some level, it’s an opportunity for both Cheese and Johnny Boy to realize there’s a real price to pay when you dare to dance with the mouse for too long.) Readers share in the sense of drunken stupor and are purposely deprived of any sure footing. Cheese is the most unreliable of narrators as he continually mixes the profound with the profane. (“Murray,” he remembers his mom telling him, “your greatest life lives on the other side of fear.”) One of Roberts’ gifts as a writer is his ability to evoke empathy amidst the debauchery; Cheese is a nebbish full of fear, and the breakup of his marriage to Florence couldn’t be more heartbreaking as it inexorably unfolds over a course of days via BlackBerry messages. (“Only love can stop time’s advance,” Cheese drunkenly pontificates after going solo at Splash Mountain. “That’s why it’s the only miracle in this short life.”) Cheese and Johnny Boy may not be doing anything other than getting soused during their latest and greatest bender, but the characters do achieve transformative heights, whether they like it or not—the challenge for readers is hanging in with them for the ride as the proceedings threaten to become as monotonous and tedious as their aimless Disney World existence. It’s like watching the impact of a slow-motion car wreck on the occupants (the results are going to be profound no matter how bad the crash ultimately ends up being). Somebody grab the car keys from these guys and call ‘em a taxi before they hurt somebody.
A 192-proof comedy for those with a taste for the hard stuff.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781648210693
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
