In her highly praised debut, Karbo told the bittersweet stories of Russian ÇmigrÇs in Los Angeles (Trespassers Welcome Here, 1989); this is a more lighthearted ramble through the City of Angels, part Hollywood satire, part domestic comedy. Mouse FitzHenry, a dedicated documentary filmmaker, is shooting a tribal wedding ceremony in Zaire with her British boyfriend Tony Cheatham when she gets a call from sister Mimi in L.A.: their mother Shirl is having brain surgery after being hit by a restaurant ceiling fan. Sixteen years before, Mouse left for Africa after Mimi stole her boyfriend (and fellow-filmmaker), the sexy half-Mexican Ivan Esparza. (Their sibling rivalry simmers all through the novel.) Mouse returns stateside, with Tony. She promises the recuperating but teary Shirl that they will marry, although she has twice rejected Tony (too safe, too decent). Then at a screening of their doc about a Kenyan pickpocket, Mouse runs into Ivan again (``This is phenomenal, Mouse. Really very very good shit''). She agrees to coproduce a film about her wedding; finally, a reason for getting married! But Tony will not cooperate; unbeknownst to Mouse, he is peddling a ``true-life'' African screenplay that climaxes with a Mouse/Tony mountaintop wedding. Meanwhile, a parallel storyline has Mimi taking sweet revenge on boyfriend Ralph (during his How to Write a Blockbuster class) after he returns to his ``almost ex-wife.'' Two set-piece scenes have Tony calling it quits with Mouse at a Malibu fund- raiser (Stars Against Ivory), and Mimi clobbering Mouse at her shower, while Ivan's camera keeps rolling. Karbo can goose Hollywood amusingly, but so can a score of other writers; where she excels is in spotlighting the neglected, whether displaced Russians or documentary filmmakers. A tighter focus on the latter might have transformed a novel that, for all its offbeat charm and funny moments, is too slack, diffuse, and underplotted to pull a reader through.
Pub Date: May 9, 1991
ISBN: 0-399-13597-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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