Eccentric movie director falls prey to a sociopath sidekick and a feckless producer/lover in Steel’s methodical Hollywood morality tale.
Though a wildly successful director of blockbusters, Tallie Jones is the opposite of glamorous: Most of the time she wears her uncombed blond hair in disheveled dreads, her wardrobe is shabby, not shabby-chic, and she has an unfashionable, ill-advised tan. Her Bel Air mansion is functional, not lavish, and her live-in lover and business partner, Hunt, actually uses the high-end kitchen, preparing gourmet meals for Tallie after a long day of shooting. Tallie’s assistant and long-time best friend Brigitte, a trust-fund baby, monopolizes the glitz department: Rodeo Drive merchants happily bestow upon her free furs, jewelry and designer handbags. But Tallie’s close-knit support group is about to unravel. A potential investor in her next film wants to audit her books. Tallie’s accountant, 60ish Victor (whose plight with a gold-digging young wife provides a poignant subplot, sadly underdeveloped), complies. But how could meticulous Victor have overlooked monthly cash withdrawals of approximately $25,000 from Tallie’s accounts? Tallie’s bills are all handled (primarily by Brigitte) using checks or credit cards. Hunt and Brigitte are above suspicion—both have their own money and no overt motive to steal. Perplexed, Tallie hires a private eye, and soon her worst fears are confirmed: Hunt and Brigitte are not perfect. Not only was Hunt cheating on her with Brigitte for three years, for the last year he’s consorted with a new mistress, who’s now pregnant with his child. The FBI is called in, and handsome, down-to-earth, widowed agent Jim Kingston uncovers the full horror. The plot thickens, but never quickens: As Tallie copes with betrayals, the narrative creeps along, slowed by the characters’ repetitious musings over what could, and then did, go wrong.
Pub Date: March 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-34319-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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