An action-packed but uneven comic romp.
In this novel, a man named Glenn Beck encounters plenty of trouble (any resemblance between the protagonist and the former Fox News commentator is most likely not a coincidence).
“There are a lot of Glenn Becks in the phone book,” the author writes. “This is one of ’em.” This Glenn Beck engages a whore. Is thrown in prison. Gets kidnapped. Twice. Repeatedly soils himself. One through-line holds the tale together: McGrouchpants clearly disdains Beck and takes palpable delight in dropping him into humiliating scenarios. The novel’s subtitle is somewhat misleading. There is no mystery to solve; at some points in the story, the author writes: “Glenn Beck thought, ‘It’s like I’m a detective.’ ” While McGrouchpants declines to offer a mystery, he seems well read. He dedicates the 2016 book to “sanity preservers” Alain Robbe-Grillet, Joan Didion, and William S. Burroughs. He kicks off the novel with quotes by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, J.G. Ballard, William Gibson, and Pauline Kael. But the work’s subtitle and the author’s pseudonym are an indication of the level of wit. The tale’s second sentence (“The whore was not the one he ordered”) sets the scabrous tone. The bulk of the 200 chapters are one to two sentences. For example: The 45-word Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Three ends with “Something had to give.” The next chapter opens with “Like: Glenn Beck’s bladder.” Along the way, the author delivers some amusing lines and colorful details. And readers who dislike Beck (and Fox News) will likely enjoy the story. But too often McGrouchpants seems to be of the opinion that the mere mention of Beck’s name in a compromising or scatological context is hilarious. Fans of Mel Brooks’ 1968 comedy The Producers may remember the humorous reaction shots of outraged Broadway patrons to the spectacle of Springtime for Hitler. Those will doubtless be the looks on some readers’ faces as they tear through this tale. In comedy, timing is everything, which raises the question: Why would readers in 2020 be interested in a book ridiculing Beck? Beck’s public profile and cultural standing have waned considerably since his Fox glory days when his signature blackboard and onscreen crying jags were brilliantly skewered by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Unfortunately, this novel feels a bit too much and too late.
An action-packed but uneven comic romp.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5323-1592-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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