Literary satire finds redemption as a character ruled by his genitals discovers he has a heart.
A very funny novel that gets darker and goes deeper as it progresses.
Farce teeters toward tragedy in this novel about an Irish author who long ago enjoyed a critical and popular breakthrough with an international best-seller. He has since sold his services to the highest Hollywood bidder while indulging his voracious appetites without moral compunction. Then he finds himself at the juncture of unlikely coincidence—just as he learns that he is in serious American tax trouble, he receives an extraordinarily generous teaching fellowship in Britain, which he initially resists at least partly because the faculty also includes one of his ex-wives. Protagonist Kennedy Marr is a familiar character, a literary scoundrel who retains his charm; even he acknowledges, in a serious turn, that “he was the most awful, dread cliché: the middle-aged novelist trying to come to terms with his own mortality.” Where it initially seems that Niven (The Second Coming, 2012, etc.) might not have much to offer beyond some hearty laughter (there’s an episode about multitasking with pornography, and ruining another laptop in the process, that is particularly slapstick), the novel turns into an argument about just what a novel—and a life—should be. “The purpose of art is to delight. Not to enlighten. Not to teach,” Kennedy insists, before he develops into a character who proves teachable, if not enlightened. He recognizes that he hasn’t been much of a father to his teenage daughter or son to his dying mother, that at least one of his marriages might have enriched his life if he’d taken it more seriously, and that he has squandered most of life on “another set of sensations to throw in the face of the abyss.” His escapades with an actress, a student and whoever else is handy lead unexpectedly to a climax that is deliriously ambitious and richly satisfying.
Literary satire finds redemption as a character ruled by his genitals discovers he has a heart.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2303-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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