A sometimes-haphazard tale but one with insightful moments.
Plaster (News, 2016, etc.) presents a comical novel concerning a lost film of Marilyn Monroe.
Henrietta is a struggling entertainment reporter in Oklahoma City, or “OKC,” as it’s often referred to in the text. The city may not seem like a hotbed of show-business activity, but a peculiar set of circumstances is destined to turn it into one. A down-on-his-luck producer/director named Deano DeBoffo happens to be stranded in town, where he was trying find backers for his own film, when the opportunity arises to make a movie about screen legend Monroe. A Hollywood agent/screenwriter in OKC named Marty Lowry claims to be in possession of a reel of 16-millimeter film, a little over three minutes long, that shows Monroe engaging in a sex act. Lowry’s idea is a simple one: he wants Deano to create a short docudrama around the footage and shoot scenes on the cheap in OKC using nothing but local talent. As luck would have it, the city happens to be home to a phenomenal Monroe impersonator—recently laid-off high school drama teacher Jim Bob Sherill. Jim Bob has dreams of becoming an actor; indeed, he’s so skilled at portraying Monroe that those who hire him seem to be unaware that he isn’t a woman. Meanwhile, other teachers are marching on the Oklahoma state capitol in protest of low wages and cuts to school arts program funding. As the teachers protest, the legislature considers incentives to lure other filmmakers to Oklahoma—and soon, the worlds of LA entertainment and OKC politics collide. The setup is indeed absurd, but as the novel goes on, it delves into some surprising subjects, including conspiracies surrounding Monroe’s death, the merits of the films of Edward D. Wood Jr., and details of method acting. Along the way, the reader learns, for instance, that Jacqueline Kennedy, of all people, said in 1962 that Monroe “will go on eternally.” Insights such as these give an unexpected weight to the fantastical characters and situations throughout. By contrast, when the book tackles more mundane subjects, it’s not quite as illuminating. The inclusion of angry teachers into the mix, for instance, doesn’t add very much to the drama, outside of a great deal of singing (Don McLean’s 1971 song “American Pie” makes more than one appearance) and the belabored idea that politicians aren’t very smart. At one point, for instance, the latter realize that that they can’t cut down too much on school funding—after all, having kids in the classroom is better than “having kids on the streets five days a week,” which “would sure enough spell trouble.” Indeed, the political aspects of the novel will likely test the reader’s patience, as the much more pressing issue is the creation of the docudrama and all the insanity that arises from it. The focus on Monroe’s life—and why she’s remembered so fondly, even today—proves to be much more intriguing than a fight for public school dance and theater productions.
A sometimes-haphazard tale but one with insightful moments.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9994185-0-5
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Mossik Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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