Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 19, 1992 TAG: 9201190211
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?\ By Gary K. Wolf. Villard Books. $17.Gary Wolf takes another surrealistic ride into his human/cartoon world with this novel. Fans of the original should know that it's a sequel to the film, not the fiction, and that's fine. Details of plot could hardly be less important here. This is an exercise in pure style and language. Those who can't go along with Wolf's playful, pun-filled language and cartwheeling imagination won't be able to finish the first chapter. But if a combination of Raymond Chandler, Chuck Jones and Mandrake the Magician sounds intriguing, give this one a try.
The titular bunny is worried that wife Jessica is two-timing him with Clark Gable. Any scandal could scuttle Roger's chances for the role of Rhett Butler in the musical version of "Gone With the Wind" that David O. Selznick is producing. The other candidates are Baby Herman and the darkly mysterious Kirk Enigman. Before it's over, enough lost brothers and twins (evil and otherwise) have popped up to keep a soap opera busy for a year.
The book is so enjoyable that it's easy to overlook Wolf's considerable skill as a writer. He is celebrating style over content here. That approach is out of fashion in mysteries these days, but it shouldn't be undervalued, particularly when it's handled with such a lively sense of fun.
- MIKE MAYO, Book page editor
\ The Investigator.\ By Richard Moore. Story Line Press. $18.95.
This novel by a poet should have been a play. Richard Moore has created an insanity in three actors, siblings who have lived together for years off their dead father's wealth. Archibald, who doesn't like to speak to people (nothing wrong with that) is still the overtly nutty one. His clothes are askew much of the time. He wanders the town, picks up rubber bands abandoned at the post office and remembers his days in the airborne and a repressed homosexual urge.
What's really bugging Archibald, however, is the lately developed notion that sister Clara and brother Edward are really having an incestuous relationship, and he just has to do something about it. That's the hinge upon which the whole plot turns. It's a whole lot easier to see this tale as an O'Hara play, or an Albee, even. Tennessee Williams could have done wonders with it. In sum, though, "The Investigator" doesn't really discover much. Unfortunately, neither does the reader.
- ROBERT HILLDRUPo
\ Remember.\ By Barbara Taylor Bradford. Random House. $22.50.
With "Remember," Barbara Taylor Bradford single-handedly carries on the tradition of "women's books" written by women with three names. She made an impressive debut with "A Woman of Substance." Unfortunately, seven books later, she seems to have hung onto the woman while losing the substance.
"Remember" is 381 pages of unbelievable sentimental pap! Are we really to believe these cardboard characters and counterfeit plot? Why is everyone so beautiful, and life so achingly exquisite in this novel? Isn't anyone ever dyspeptic, tired, or even (God forbid) working? And the seduction scene in the garden in France . . . ouch.
If your life is so depressing that you need a completely frivolous story of lost loves and new identities, try "Remember." If not, forget it.
- JUDY KWELLER
Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman. Judy Kweller is a vice president of an advertising agency.