Customer Reviews

American Icon: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

While I've never been a fan of Pat Booth's novels, this one is especially bad. While the premise is good (a pseudo-Martha Stewart changes from sweetheart to "queen of mean"), Ms. Booth skips years at a time. One page the heroine is young, madly in love with her husband, the perfect mother and perfect wife. The very next page -- 20 years have flown by and Kate has become a person that the reader doesn't recognize. None of the people in the novel are very nice. I didn't really care about any of them or what happened to them. This isn't even a good "beach" book though it could have been. Better luck next time.

I read the first review of the book and expected to find a literary gem (or at least hoped to find one). That reviewer must have been her agent.

Sorry Pat! This one's a dud! I couldn't even finish it! This lacks the sizzle that "Malibu", & "Palm Beach" had! WHAT HAPPENED?! You became TAME all of a sudden! I bought this book just on your name alone without even reading what it was about because I loved the other books so much! Sorry, I got as far as Chapter 15 and just couldn't keep my eyelids open any longer! This one's a snoozer! Don't mess with your original formula! The HEAT is what I expect from you!

Kate, a glamorous New York City based fashion model falls in love with Peter, a successful literary agent. It's the late 1960s when they marry, move to the Hamptons, and have a daughter. Starting their own cottage-industry business, Kate becomes an enormous success as a best selling author, a magazine publisher, and then the head of a home-making empire. But success is not without its costs. Personal and business pressures drive Kate and Peter into the arms of other lovers. But when a tragedy befalls their daughter, both of them come to realize the truth of their commitment to each other and to their family. American Icon is a superbly written novel that is expertly narrated by Kate Harper in the complete and unabridged production from Chivers Audio Books. With excellent technical production values, this highly recommended addition to any community library audiobook collection has a playing time of 13 hours, 15 minutes.

I enjoyed Pat Booth's other books, Miami, Palm Beach, Malibu and Beverly Hills. I would have liked this book much more had it not been for the ending. I liked the idea of Kate Haywood being a Martha Stewart type, with her rise to success stunning. I was disappointed in her final decision as to who she would spend the rest of her life with. Her husband is an egotistical jerk who wants to take all the credit for her success. I found the book a little confusing they way Ms. Booth spent so much time developing the story of the American sculptor and the English doctor. I kept wondering where this all was going in relation to the start of the book with the development of the Kate Haywood character. All in all I wasn't left with that `book well read' feeling when I finished.

"American Icon" was not your typical Pat Booth book. I will say this much: I think I like her old books better. This book was good, Kate and Peter and Donna and Steven are interesting enough, but it lacks all the steamy scenes of her early books. Try it, you'll like it!!!

I have not read any other books by Pat Booth but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I suspect that people in my "age group", having been through many of the things that the characters in the book go through, appreciate this book more than others. The characters, while not always likable, were realistic. They made choices that my friends and I have made. The characters in the book were not happy with many of these choices, but that is the way it turns out many times in life, too. The main reason I liked this book was the flawed but realistic characters.

I am a great fan of the works of Pat Booth. Her analytical skills, expressed in easily accessible novel form, about modern American life are often breathtaking acute. But American Icon is by far her finest work. The story of the tormented but successful life of a character who might be Clair Booth Luce or Martha Stewart showers the reader with diversion, excitement, empathy, and most of all, understanding of our own modern lives as Americans. It was impossible to see this book as other than a modern classic in the making, a prose poem that I simply could not put down. From now on, whenever I look at a career woman, I will think of what I have learned from Pat Booth and American Icon. The tri-continental views of the gilded life from America to Europe to Africa are gripping. Once my wife finishes it, I plan to read it again.