Word: apercus
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...power out of it, and the airy, appealing innocence of Jerry's voice buoys the novel whenever it's in danger of sinking. As Aloft follows Jerry through his daily rounds and bemused reminiscences, you're gently lulled into a sense of suburban security by his good-humored apercus, until--bam!--the scariness of life surges into view like water from a ruptured main: a miserable ex-girlfriend pops a fistful of OxyContin, or someone chokes on a turkey bone, or a memory surfaces unbidden of a cop bringing Daisy home in the middle of the night because...
...week (not to be confused with Trista and Ryan's more lavish and much higher-rated nuptials) was the culmination of a secret but ardent yearlong courtship by Dean. Yes, it may be a marriage of convenience, but the hushed backroom cell-phone calls, the clandestine visits, the little apercus of agreement on global warming are all part of a modern political romance novel. Apparently the doctor has a bedside manner after all. But the relationship did not really get serious until Gore decided it was time for a blunt conversation in August. The country needed to learn more about...
...Vernon God Little is rendered in strenuously lifelike Texan diction ("Six packa Coors, I'll go git it") larded with hick malapropisms--you know you're not supposed to like Little's mom because she calls Ricardo Montalban "Ricardo Moltenbomb." Pierre has a field day with the alienated apercus...
...most part, Klein sustains the mastery of storytelling mechanics that he demonstrated in Colors. The plot accelerates to a fitting climax, goosed along by enough offhand apercus and knowing set pieces to satisfy any reader interested in The Way We Politick Now. If this reporter has more novels inside him, let them come...
Pakula, who has proved his ability to turn paranoid suspicions into scary reality (Klute, All the President's Men), gives his movie the dark glow we have come to expect from this genre. But we don't go to movies like this in search of stylish apercus. We go to see innocents like ourselves getting swept up by irresistible tides of terror. And to have the pants scared off us. That doesn't happen in The Pelican Brief. An airplane read has been turned into nothing more compelling than an airplane...