Review by New York Times Review
In this graphic memoir, Alissa Torres recounts losing her husband on 9/11. A FEW years back in these pages Walter Kirn took aim at the triteness of what might be called the shocked-onlooker strain of 9/11 writing. The banality of accounts that began along the lines of "I was feeding the cat when a friend called and told me to turn on the TV" were, for Kirn, irrelevant to the enormity of the circumstances. "American Widow," Alissa Torres's raw, occasionally maddening, bracing graphic memoir, shows how those same seemingly trite details, coming from someone whose life was shattered by the attacks, can convey what it means to have your existence broken off by an event that cannot fit into any familiar frame of reference. Torres's husband, Eddie, a Colombian who had been working as a currency broker in the United States, began a job at Cantor Fitzgerald on Sept. 10, 2001. He was one of the 685 employees of the company killed the next day in the mass murder at the World Trade Center. Alissa was pregnant with their son. "American Widow," illustrated in simple black, white and light blue by the artist Sungyoon Choi, is a sometimes prickly counter to the narrative of 9/11 as a time when New Yorkers came together selflessly, bound by shared tragedy. Torres isn't denying the phenomenon. But by insisting on the solitary, isolating nature of grief, she is implying that the feeling of community was easier to grasp for those of us lucky enough not to have lost anyone. The community she finds - as in her fleeting connection with someone who, like herself, is posting "missing" posters in the slim hopes of locating a loved one - is very small. Even in the company of other victims' relatives, Torres feels alone. When she lunches with other women who lost their husbands ("I hope we bomb them all!" says one; "I agree," another says), she sits gloomily apart. There's an unfortunate bit of superiority in that sequence, an implicit judgment passed on women who want to see their husbands' murderers punished, who want to see the entire mind-set that gave rise to the killings wiped out. Torres is turned off by something quite human: the desire for revenge after the trauma of pain and loss. What's inhuman is to expect people who have suffered outrageously to rise to a shining standard of virtue and forgiveness. Paradoxically, it's Torres's refusal to see beyond her personal experience that gives "American Widow" its power. Torres recounts her alienation from friends, many of whom get to the "enough is enough" phase with her a few months after Eddie's death. And she flinches at the bullying commentators, from the political left to the right, who portrayed 9/11 widows as publicity-hungry media vultures. "American Widow" is particularly barbed in its depiction of the incompetence, and sometimes the callousness, of aid organizations and government agencies assisting the victims. In one scene a haggard American Red Cross representative tells Torres the organization will contact her "when we can" about flying Eddie's relatives from Colombia for the funeral, which is only a few days away. You could argue that these people were stretched to the limit. You could also argue that there are some jobs simply too sensitive to mismanage - a standard embodied here by a competent and compassionate F.B.I. agent who steps in and takes charge after Torres's encounter with the Red Cross. "American Widow" is a contrary beast for its depiction of a series of missed connections in a time venerated for the way it unified people. These incidents are sometimes unbearably moving, as when the smile of a maternity-shop clerk deflates after she's told Torres is shopping for a black dress. Even as Torres delineates her experience, her story tells those of us lucky enough not to have lost someone on Sept. 11 that we'd be foolish to believe we can share it. Eddie Torres, his wife seven months'pregnant, started a new job at Cantor Fitzgerald on Sept. 10, 2001. Charles Taylor is a columnist for The Newark Star-Ledger and Bloomberg News.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Washington politics is the fountain of satire, and prolific, multitalented Buckley has been imbibing its elixir for years. Following Boomsday (2007), his hilarious take on the impending Social Security meltdown, Buckley targets the fraught relationship between the president and U.S. Supreme Court while continuing his disparagement of the insidious blurring of reality and TV. The wretchedly unpopular and morose President Vanderdamp has to come up with yet another nominee for the Supreme Court because Dexter Mitchell, the botoxed, mannequin-haired chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and presidential wannabe, has viciously shot down two perfectly respectable candidates. Jaws drop when Vanderdamp picks Pepper Cartwright, the irresistible, sharp-tongued, whip-smart Texas judge on everyone's favorite TV courtroom show. What will the uptight and polarized Supreme Court justices make of this sassy interloper? Will Kiss my Ass Pepper be the proverbial breath of fresh air or a tabloid disaster? Buckley's ingenious and mischievous tale of a Washington shakeup via an injection of good old American authenticity is funny and entertaining yet disconcertingly toothless. You would think that in a time of endless debacles and disasters what's called for is take-no-prisoners satire, a torch not a pacifier. Instead, Buckley delivers a clever, merry, escapist little parody. OK, sedatives are useful, but let's hope he has his claws out next time around.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
From the indefatigable Buckley comes a flabby satire about a television judge who ends up on the Supreme Court. Unpopular president Donald P. Vanderdamp nominates Pepper Cartwright after Sen. Dexter "Hang 'em High" Mitchell torpedoes his first two contenders. Once Pepper is confirmed and leaves her show, her producer (and soon-to-be ex-husband), Buddy Bixby, persuades Mitchell to leave the Senate and try his hand at acting as the star of the political drama POTUS. Vanderdamp, meanwhile, mounts a re-election bid to protest Congress's approval of an absurd term limits amendment. He faces off against Mitchell, who ditches his role as television president to run for real president, and before you can say "Whizzer White," it is left up to newbie Pepper and the rest of the Supremes to decide the fate of the election. Unfortunately for the reader, Pepper's story gets lost between the jokes and the overstuffed plot (including a romance with the Chief Justice, the investigation of a leak inside the Supreme Court and a nuclear threat from China), and the satire is oddly detached from the zeitgeist. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
When the Senate Judiciary Committee shoots down two of his Supreme Court nominees, lame duck president Donald Vanderdamp nominates a feisty, tell-it-like-it-is Texan who's also the star of a -reality show. What follows is a laugh-a-minute story from New York Times best-selling author/genius political satirist Buckley (Boomsday) that practically screams "Hollywood box office hit." Actress Anne Heche superbly portrays the zany cast of characters, some who bear an uncanny resemblance to real inhabitants of Capitol Hill. One of the funniest books of the year; highly recommended for public libraries and politicians with a sense of humor. [Audio clip available through www.hachettebookgroup.com; from the review of the Twelve hc, "Buckley is a master at setting up ridiculous relationships, and he doesn't disappoint here," LJ 7/08.-Ed.]-Valerie Piechocki, Prince George's Cty. Memorial Lib., Largo, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
As before, Buckley (Boomsday, 2007, etc.) blurs the line distinguishing the historical, the plausible and the preposterous amid the political circus of anything-goes Washington. The satiric scenario has plenty of potential, but sketchy characters and slapdash plotting result in a split decision. On a Supreme Court as divided as the country, President Donald Vanderdamp finds his first two nominees to fill a crucial vacancy rejected on the shakiest of grounds (one wrote a grade-school review of To Kill a Mockingbird and found parts of the movie "kind of boring"). With his popularity at an all-time low and with no intention of running for a second term, the president then dares the Senate to reject his third nominee, America's most popular jurist, Pepper Cartwright of television's highly rated Courtroom Six. After she sails through the confirmation process, both the new justice and the novel seem to lose their way. Instead of relying on the common sense and colloquial language that have made her such a hit as a TV personality, she tries her best to apply legal precedent befitting the Supreme Court, thus alienating many of her fellow justices and most of the public. She also becomes estranged from her husband, a reality-show producer, and involved with the chief justice, whose wife left him for a woman immediately after the court sanctioned gay marriage. After a politician-turned-TV-actor challenges for the presidency, the novel inevitably reaches its climax as the contested race is left to the court to decide. Yet questions remain: Why is the president so unpopular? (He vetoes every spending bill, which would surely enrage Congress, but shouldn't upset the public.) Why does Pepper take all the heat for every split decision? (Four other justices vote with her, and the court had a history of 5-4 decisions before her arrival.) Why does Buckley think it's enough to give his characters funny names (Blyster Forkmorgan, Esquire, et al.) rather than develop them? Even Buckley fans might suspect that he's begun to crank them out a little too quickly. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
