The book's portrayal of Pandy feels both self-congratulatory and unintentionally unpleasant, the hostility toward male...
Bushnell (One Fifth Avenue, 2008, etc.) is still playing her Sex and the City riffs in this self-referential sort-of satire about an author whose insanely popular fictional creation has taken over her life.
PJ “Pandy” Wallis created her fictional alter ego, Monica—think Carrie Bradshaw on steroids—in four bestselling novels and the movies that followed. The problem is that her newest book is not about Monica. It’s about Pandy’s ancestor Lady Wallis Wallis, who arrived in America in 1775—and, according to Pandy’s agent and suspiciously intimate confidant, Henry, historical fiction is a hard sell, so her editor has turned it down. As Pandy ponders whether to give in and write another Monica book, she relives her career. Along the way she became best friends with the actress who played Monica on screen, SondraBeth Schnowzer. During their days of wild, often drunken gal-pal escapades, they called themselves PandaBeth. Their friendship, which has an unexplored homoerotic undertone, ended when hot actor Doug Stone slept with both of them. Despite the gaggle of indistinguishable friends surrounding her now, Pandy still misses SondraBeth. The last time they spoke, SondraBeth warned Pandy that her husband-to-be, celebrity chef/restaurateur Jonny Balaga, was not a nice man. SondraBeth was right. Jonny went through Pandy’s money and cheated on her. What’s worse, he couldn’t swim, liked contemporary furniture, and didn’t properly appreciate the pedigree of Pandy’s Connecticut family estate. She’s now divorcing him, but the settlement requires her to fork over the $1 million advance on her newest book. Without a book contract there won’t be an advance, and Pandy worries what Jonny will go after instead—possibly the rights to Monica herself. But how separate is Monica’s identity from jet-setting Pandy’s? Or Bushnell's, readers may wonder?
The book's portrayal of Pandy feels both self-congratulatory and unintentionally unpleasant, the hostility toward male characters is virulent—the only good male in the book may not be one—and the sense of humor is nil.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-446-55790-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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