A spirited, lavishly detailed behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of a newsroom.
Journalist Carr’s (A Journal of the Crazy Year, 2013, etc.) accomplished debut novel takes readers into the world of local newsroom politics, rendering that world in elaborate, Dickensian detail.
Here are the petty turf wars over stories and bylines, the venal and greedy ad-people willing to do anything to increase the station’s revenue, the brainless and bullying newsroom bosses whose screw-ups make life miserable for the hardworking writers and reporters. Here are the pompous news-readers enjoying their local celebrity and the real stories reporters have to fight to get told. Arrow Henley, an ace reporter at WDIK-TV’s Action News in Knoxville, Tenn., had been told by his station’s general manager to go get sensational footage of a young man threatening to commit suicide by throwing himself off a bridge. Remembering the assignment sends Henley on a drinking binge, but his dilemma—an old-fashioned, story-oriented newsroom being taken over by ratings-and-numbers-driven mindless media—is shared by all of Carr’s main characters, including Dexter Drimmel, a caustic newsman from WIMP in Little Rock, who’s tired of seeing his station run preprogrammed “content” (bought in two-hour blocks from a West Coast company) rather than actual local news reported by actual local reporters. Reporter Dan Price, whose copy gets rewritten by his overbearing bosses and who dreams of somehow fighting back, feels the same way. These workplace stories are rendered by Carr in such intricate detail and with such smooth skill that readers will easily gain a vivid sense of what it’s like to work in a local newsroom—the technical problems, the industry jargon, the multitude of quick decisions that need to be made every day. Against this backdrop, Carr weaves a theme of corruption that provides most of the book’s considerable comic energy and fast-paced dialogue.
A spirited, lavishly detailed behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of a newsroom.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1493593613
Page Count: 496
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© 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.
