The big sweet hell of a sleepover in bloody hospital rubbish, with pieces of bone, lumps of brain, and white panties.
Admirers of last year’s Nineteen Seventy-Four (the first in the Red Riding Quartet), awash in cut up bodies, castration, girls scalped, strangled, stuff like that may sit back and fix themselves a rich second helping of the same bloody pudding, now even worse, if the tum-tum’s game.
The Yorkshire Ripper’s loose in Chapeltown, colorful bloke likes to really damage prostitutes, bash in their skulls, cut their throats, hollow out their breasts and stomachs with a screwdriver. Third body the constables know about is that of Mrs. Marie Watts, a prosty, and with the Jubilee upon us, we can expect enough bodies for two Rippers—and there may be two. So the whole Chapeltown force becomes the prostitute murder squad, sent out to interview all the local prosties for johns who like a bit of strange—say, biting, or up the arse without a condom or a by your leave, spooky stuff, give us names and addresses, ladies. Peace lays on such heavy lashings of British police argot that few US readers will grasp every turn of phrase or obscene coinage. We hop about with copper Bob Fraser, sometimes in the first-person, and Yorkshire Post correspondent Jack Whitehead, also sometimes in the first-person. All told, six women are murdered, four assaulted—including Bob Fraser’s girlfriend, Janice Ryan, who is pregnant with his child and for whom he pimps, and Jack Whitehead’s prosty, Ka Su Peng (assaulted only). Meanwhile, peppered over every chapter, are true-crime slayings and grisly bloodlettings from 1977’s newspapers until Nineteen Seventy-Seven is a Boschian landscape of corpses chest-deep in gore, no longer the mere tea-party of previous installment. Not an easy novel to follow, and many will have to read the end twice to make sense of the frantic battery and horror Peace lets fly, with one Ripper at least getting a taste of his own screwdriver.
The big sweet hell of a sleepover in bloody hospital rubbish, with pieces of bone, lumps of brain, and white panties.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-85242-639-X
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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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