Temporary Insanity

Rating:
Summary: touching, real, well worth reading
Review: However much charm and wit may have been in her first two books, TEMPORARY INSANITY is easily Leslie Carroll's best work to date. Where her earlier work focused on romance, this is a persuasive tale, humorous yet at times harrowing, in which the plucky heroine copes with demeaning temp jobs, loutish bosses, and the brutal difficulties faced by someone struggling to be an actress in New York city. What helps her get through it all is her passionate belief in her dreams and her admirable unwillingness to settle for less than what she feels she can achieve. Her refusal to accept being dismissed by insensitive jerks in positions of relative power is bouyed by the support of a couple of loyal friends and by the unconditional love of her grandmother, a former Follies girl now in her nineties, to whom the endearing heroine is fiercely devoted. With her customary verbal facility and enthusiastic descriptiveness, but with an added measure of authentic, sometimes complex personal emotion, Ms. Carroll presents the reader with a life fully lived yet longing to be more fully realized. Readers may be surprised (or not) at how true and touching Alice Finnegan's struggles can be.

Rating:
Summary: Brava!
Review: I have been a fan of Ms. Carroll's since MISS MATCH & REALITY CHECK. In TEMORARY INSANITY, this talented author takes what she does best (intelligent, clever women with brains, beauty and balls) and creates a delightful novel that has universal appeal. How does one decide between art and commerce? Passion vs. paying rent?
Do not dismiss this book as "chick lit" -- it is so much more! By all means, take it to the neach. But re-read it in the fall and share it with your friends in the winter and spring. Ms. Carroll is one talented author who has a voice to be reckoned with!

Rating:
Summary: touching, real, well worth reading
Review: I have been a fan of Ms. Carroll's since MISS MATCH & REALITY CHECK. In TEMORARY INSANITY, this talented author takes what she does best (intelligent, clever women with brains, beauty and balls) and creates a delightful novel that has universal appeal. How does one decide between art and commerce? Passion vs. paying rent?
Do not dismiss this book as "chick lit" -- it is so much more! By all means, take it to the neach. But re-read it in the fall and share it with your friends in the winter and spring. Ms. Carroll is one talented author who has a voice to be reckoned with!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I quickly ordered this book after reading the first five pages on Amazon.com, convinced that I would love it. However, I was sorely disappointed. The characters were likeable enough, however too much of the plot was given away on the back cover of the book or by foreshadowing within the book itself. The few details of the story that weren't so easy to guess (or read on the back) were not very exciting. I found myself simply wanting to finish the story, and was never really absorbed by the plot. Very unsatisfying. On a positive note, there were some very amusing parts concerning the main character's daytime jobs -- reminded me of a few of my summer jobs in college! All in all, it was simply average entertainment. I am not sure if I would call it a waste of time, but it was pretty darn close!

Rating:
Summary: NY actress's struggles are funny, touching, and authentic
Review: In the big bad city of New York, Alice Finnegan is just one among thousands of aspiring actors who works a mundane job to support herself while waiting for her big break. For Alice, acting is as natural as breathing since it's a talent she'd inherited in her genes from her grandmother, a former Follies girl. Working as a legal secretary is no picnic as Alice soon finds, as job after job ends in disaster. Her bosses almost always turn out to be female and absolute shrews, and her fiery Irish temperament always gets the better of her.
During all this, Alice also manages to regularly fall for handsome, charming men who never fail to break her heart. Between jobs and men, she still grabs an audition here, do a crowd scene there. To console and aid her are her two good friends and her unflagging grandmother whose zest for life is infectious. Are striving to be your own person and having a career (or at least trying to) such incompatible goals, Alice wonders. Will this spunky and caring actress ever find her niche in life?
Drawing from her own experiences as an actress, author Leslie Carroll brings a high level of authenticity to the life and doings of protagonist Alice Finnegan, as she struggles to strike a balance between love, acting career, personal life and honesty. Her experiences in the work place are simultaneously hilarious, sober and authentic. An absorbing saga of the ups and downs in life, especially that of an aspiring actor, this story gives the readers an unbiased behind-the-cameras look at the hard work, crazy hours and other details, whether it be a play, a movie or a television serial. Interesting side characters represent the various viewpoints of the struggling-actor scenario, while Alice's nonagenarian grandmother is a breath of fresh air with her oddities and encouraging words. Ms. Carroll's story has the power to draw the readers deep into Alice's world and hold them there under until the last page is turned.
Funny, charming and yet serious, "Temporary Insanity" will live long in the readers' memories.

Rating:
Summary: NY actress's struggles are funny, touching, and authentic
Review: Thirty-something Alice Finnegan pays the rent doing odious temporary office jobs for nasty bosses while hoofing the mean streets of Broadway seeking acting gigs. Her nonagenarian grandmother, a long ago retired showgirl, lives with Alice and encourages the dream.

Besides her beloved grandma, Alice finds solace from being an out of work actress with her perfuming pals Izzy and Dorian. The Three Musketeers are there for each other. The support of these two and her granny keeps her going when office dating turns out wrong and her daytime bosses assign her the handling of trash projects. As directors tell her what they want her to fix about herself that is when they don't want to taste the goods personally, Alice, in spite of all that negativity, expects to one day be the toast of the city with her musketeers at her side.

This is a fun chick lit tale starring a delightful protagonist who with the help of her friends takes blows, but keeps on trying. Alice is a wonderful protagonist; many readers will root for her to turn Broadway into her wonderland especially when they watch the invasion of the permanent crowd on the residents of temp world. Deeper than the amusing REALITY CHECK and MISS MATCH, TEMPORARY INSANITY is a solid look at someone trying to make it to the majors, but must eat first.

Harriet Klausner