If only the fireworks which Scottoline (Devil’s Corner, 2005, etc.) uses to extricate her feisty heroine from her problems...
Judges who live in glass houses shouldn’t mouth off, as the latest of Scottoline’s Philadelphia legal eagles learns when her public and private lives collide with a bang.
The Honorable Cate Fante is the golden girl of the Eastern District bench, appointed at 39 to one of the most prestigious positions in the American bar. But not even her sharp mind can figure out a way to keep powerful TV producer Art Simone from evading Philadelphia lawyer Richard Marz’s clearly meritorious claim that his one-time buddy stole the idea and the leading characters for the wildly successful series Attorneys at Law from Marz. Cate reluctantly decides the case in favor of Simone. But the stern lecture she delivers to the defendant from the bench, which inspires Marz to hurl abuse at him in open court, is a distinct faux pas, as Chief Judge Sherman informs her privately. Actually, it’s a hundred times worse. Within two days Simone and Marz are both dead, the first a murder, the second an apparent suicide. As if the resulting notoriety weren’t punishment enough, Marz’s friend and partner, Detective Frank Russo, threatens to go public with details of Cate’s compulsive sexual interludes with lowlife pickups, the latest of whom is also dead. Even worse, Simone’s death evidently won’t prevent his production company from launching Judges at Court, a new series based on Cate’s life, featuring thinly fictionalized versions of not only the besmirched judge but her publicity-shy best friend Gina Katsakis and her autistic son Warren. Can she sue the company to prevent her private life from turning into prime-time drama? Probably not—but if she doesn’t, her days as a judge will be numbered.
If only the fireworks which Scottoline (Devil’s Corner, 2005, etc.) uses to extricate her feisty heroine from her problems were as compelling or believable as the sure-footed mastery with which she plunges her into hot water.Pub Date: March 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074290-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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