PositiveThe Toronto Globe and Mail (CAN)This is film writing with enthusiasm and purpose ... Across 400 intensely reported pages, Kenny traces the genesis, production, themes and legacy of Goodfellas with the exactitude of a scholar and excitement of a true Martin Scorsese acolyte. No detail is too small to discuss with fervent dedication and no participant given unfairly short thrift. Kenny talks to anyone and everyone involved in making the film, with the discussions expertly contextualized by a film writer who was in the thick of the scene at the time it was unfolding ... the author’s one-on-one with the master himself proves that there is just so much unknowable mystery to the art of filmmaking that maybe knowing we can never know everything is, well, knowledge enough.
Lawrence Wright
MixedThe Globe and MailThis is the novel as Nostradamus. It is bewilderingly, terrifyingly all-too-real. Which is both excellent and terrible news for Wright. No author could have asked for better timing, in terms of marketing hooks. And in the midst of panic, people inevitably turn toward art that offers a reflection, however cracked, of our current moment ... But reading The End of October is also like sticking one hand in a dormant blender, with the other hovering above the “on” switch. I have never swung so wildly between high anxiety and deep dread than when ploughing through The End of October’s 400 pages earlier this month. I couldn’t stop reading it, and I’m not quite sure whether that was a testament to the writing itself or because I had a sick anticipation of seeing what new horror awaited on the next page, just to prepare what might be coming down the pandemic pipe in my own life ... Wright frequently proves that he might be a strong journalist with impeccable instincts, but he is no literary master...he is strongest when straight-forwardly chronicling history and digging up little-known details, not painting rich interior lives or stretching a sentence until its beauty reveals itself ... strip away The End of October’s technical expertise and narrative clairvoyance – which is often hard to do, given how eerily accurate Wright is in envisioning our current reality – and the book is ultimately an elevated airport thriller ... Henry and the rest of the heroes and villains he encounters along the way are certainly interesting creations, but not exactly layered or complicated. Many incidents feel explicitly crafted to appeal to Hollywood producers looking for splashy set-pieces, and a good deal of the dialogue is just as screenplay-simple. And when Wright swerves into Henry’s professional back story, which includes the appearance of an evil genius straight out of James Bond territory (or worse: Austin Powers), the entire endeavour threatens to go off the rails ... Still, if you’re morbidly curious as to where we might stand come this fall, you’re not likely to find a clearer, more horrifying answer than The End of October. If the world reads this today, we might be able to avoid Wright’s tomorrow.
Ronan Farrow
PositiveThe Globe and Mail (CAN)The tale is a publisher’s dream—a behind-the-scenes dive into what happens when noxious Hollywood power collides with big-media indifference. And in Catch and Kill, Farrow delivers, racing through the missteps and breakthroughs of his reporting as if he were on fire, skewering so very many along the way ... Weinstein comes off as an insatiable and horrifying predator, a true monster ... astounding and sickening at the same time, a celebration of all that is right with journalism—even as it exposes all that is so very broken ... The story of his reporting is fascinating. The story of how it almost never came to light is disgusting ... Certainly this kind of behind-the-scenes story demands a first-person perspective, but Farrow could have just as easily emphasized the sincere doggedness of his own reporting rather than lean on the faux-breathlessness of an airport-thriller genre. Frequently, his writing slips into hard-bitten cliché and head-scratching attempts at literary flourish ... a testament to the power of unrelenting journalism. A devastating and depressing and infuriating testament. But a testament all the same.
