Gleeful jumble of Brit-style slapstick, puns, and sly wit. Quite a treat.
Clever potshots from English bestseller Holden (Gossip Hound, 2002, etc.).
Slackmucklethwaite? Where’s that? Next door to the arse end of nowhere, but its inhabitants are a cheerful lot, especially when a posh new development of expensive homes slides into the century-old mining tunnels beneath it. Looks like a front-page story for the local newspaper, the Mercury (affectionately known as the Mockery), and Slackmucklethwaite’s own Lois Lane, Kate Clegg, whips out her pad and pencil—um, she can’t find her pad and pencil. Maybe it’s under the panting, thrusting romance titled Northern Gigolo that she’s penning in her spare time? Well, she still lives with her mum and dad and Gran in a house called Wit’s End, and she’s not going to make a name for herself as a journalist at this rate, is she? Especially not when the Mockery’s new owner, loudmouthed, porcine Peter Hardstone, kills the story. Looks like a conflict-of-interest scandal is brewing, but Kate is distracted by the godlike handsomeness and incandescent sexiness of Peter’s son Nate, who was just thrown out of Oxford for using drugs. He’s a sexy bastard, he is, but could he possibly be the man of her dreams? Oh, dear—he just happened to see her in that yellow-and-tangerine quasi-poncho-tank-top thingy her Gran knitted for her. So maybe not. Oh, who cares about all Hardstones? Kate was working at the paper only for a press credential to go to Cannes and cover the film festival anyway. Off she goes to the land of palm trees and sunshine to goggle at the stars, deal-makers, flacks, and suck-ups who flock there once a year for the next best thing to the Oscars. Holden cuts them all down to size, and our Kate finds true love at last. Along the way, Holden’s deft management of a huge cast of zany types ensures that the breakneck pace never flags.
Gleeful jumble of Brit-style slapstick, puns, and sly wit. Quite a treat.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-452-28517-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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