Not as funny as the first book, but if there’s a third, we’d give it a chance.
Penelope Lemon deals with some unusual problems at the trailer park.
A sequel to Penelope Lemon: Game On (2018) finds Majors’ plucky heroine still struggling to remain in the middle class, now working as a receptionist at Rolling Acres Estates, where the property owner is a kleptomaniac and also masturbates daily in the restroom attached to Penelope's office. Penelope and her boss, Missy, have noticed things disappearing from their desks, and they’re sure Dewitt, the owner, is taking them. “ ‘Listen,’ Missy said, popping off the couch like a submerged pool toy breaking the surface. ‘We’re going up there and finding our stuff. He’s probably eaten the candy and the gum. But those socks of yours? They’re hanging in a Hello Kitty frame in the sex dungeon beneath his trailer.’ ” While her son, Theo, is off at camp, Penelope expects to “live for two weeks as an unfettered badass single gal, as often depicted on television shows set in New York City,” but the realities of life in the backwater burg of Hillsboro, Virginia, will take things in a rather different direction. Majors' arch delivery makes the book amusing sentence by sentence, but this time the plot is a bit too silly to be resonant. One storyline revolves around a bidet and an aging online suitor named Fitzwilliam Darcy; a second deploys a personalized green-and-orange dildo and a rampaging squad of skunks. A more promising thread set at the gym, where Penelope runs into her ex-husband’s not-very-nice new girlfriend, lies about her athletic abilities, and gets asked out by a workout warrior, is set up but not sufficiently pursued. Perhaps the difference between the original book and this sequel is that the first deals with the absurdities of modern life and the second with the absurdities of, well, the absurd.
Not as funny as the first book, but if there’s a third, we’d give it a chance.Pub Date: May 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8071-7267-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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