A nearly nonexistent sense of humor unfortunately negates any vicarious pleasure to be got from either Bushnell’s better...
Rapacious social climber gets the rich husband and fame she’s always desired—and it’s far from enough.
This being the fifth from Bushnell (Sex and the City, 1996; Four Blondes, 2000, etc.), one expects generous lashings of fashion, sex, and New York City—and such expectations are more than rewarded. Stage center in this gaudy little bauble is Janey Wilcox, a morally challenged model at the upper end of the allowed age spectrum (early 30s) who’s managed to stay on top as one of the lithe, lingerie-clad Victoria’s Secret vixens. Sick of not-so-subtly trading sex with powerful Manhattan men for favors, invites, meals, and money, she decides that she needs to do what “friends” do (thinking of other people as anything but accessories and tools is somewhat of a stretch for Janey) and get a rich husband. The poor sucker is Selden Rose, a basically nice guy from Chicago who’s CEO of a successful cable movie channel. A quick romance ends in marriage and an Italian honeymoon that quickly has Janey throwing tantrums at being so far away from good shopping. Ensconced in their New York apartment, Janey quickly comes to realize that she could have married much better than Selden. Though she’s a past master of the New York scene and the neuroses and accoutrements of its more fabulous denizens, Bushnell runs into more than a few snags when she tries to rev this lumbering, chaotic novel forward. It’s all well and good to create a creature as devastatingly cold-hearted and childish as Janey just so we can stand back and watch the chaos ensue (à la Valley of the Dolls, too bluntly alluded to), but a lurching, frequently stalled plot gets in the way to an almost embarrassing degree.
A nearly nonexistent sense of humor unfortunately negates any vicarious pleasure to be got from either Bushnell’s better observations or Janey’s monstrous diva-tude.Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7868-6818-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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