Shapely, an absolute natural for film.
Brady returns to his beloved Corps (the memoir The Coldest War, 1990) to write his second Marine Corps novel (The Marines of Autumn, 2000).
Here, Brady retells the traditional story of “Billy Port’s Ride”—an epic about US Marines stationed as sentinels in chaotic North China. No authority, in the States, Mongolia, Japan, or Moscow, however, will admit that Billy Port’s ride ever took place. By 1941, four years into the Sino-Japanese War, the treaty cities of Shanghai, Canton, Peking, Tsingtao, and other places flourish, with black Chicago musicians playing swing at Jimmy’s Place in Shanghai, despite Japanese occupation. For ten years, Marines have defended US business interests, doctors, missionaries, nurses, and teachers. Brady is right at home with the tony set at the clubs and on the tennis courts and quickly draws us into China’s wartime atmosphere. Born to Boston Back Bay wealth, Port chose Annapolis over Harvard, then the Marines, was written up for the Medal of Honor for killing Sandinistas in Nicaragua, became known as a blooded killer and barfighter. Port is ordered to move his troops out on a hired tramp steamer; instead he heads an armed convoy (and his Bentley) toward the Great Wall and the Gobi Desert, where he faces “bandits and warlords, Mongol separatists, food riots and fuel shortages, Chiang and the Reds fighting each other, [and] the Japs fighting both. . . .” On the road they hear of Pearl Harbor, know they are at war, see Zeroes flying over them and know that 50 miles of rough country lie ahead. Passing through the Great Wall allows Brady to drum up a wonderfully amusing scene as Port, smiling and saluting with his Navy sword, beheads a bandit general who demands a machine gun as tribute. And then it’s into the frigid Gobi and a trek to the Russian border. After many hurdles, they reach the border and, fatally for Port, the KGB.
Shapely, an absolute natural for film.Pub Date: April 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-28018-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
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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