Smith, Kyle

views updated

Smith, Kyle

PERSONAL:

Education: Yale University, graduated (summa cum laude). Hobbies and other interests: Running, reading, music.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Dallas Times-Herald, Dallas, TX, former war correspondent; Associated Press, New York, NY, former reporter and news clerk; New York Post, New York, NY, former war correspondent; People, New York, NY, critic, editor of book and music reviews, 1996-2005; New York Post, New York, NY, film critic, 2005—. Military service: U.S. Army, 1990s; served in the Persian Gulf War.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

(With J.D. Reed and Jill Smolowe) John F. Kennedy, Jr.: A Biography, Time (Chicago, IL), 1999.

Love Monkey (novel), Morrow (New York, NY), 2004.

A Christmas Caroline (novel), William Morrow (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

The protagonist of Kyle Smith's debut novel, Love Monkey is, like Smith, a journalist. Tom Farrell works for a New York tabloid and obsesses over his coworker, Julia, who knows just how to push Tom's buttons. Booklist contributor Donna Seaman felt that Smith is "devilishly hilarious in his parsing of his narrator-hero's romantic longings and degraded vocation," as well as when he satirizes the New York bar scene, his parents, and the conflict that arises in pursuing both love and casual sex. Time reviewer Lev Grossman commented that in spite of the wit to be found in Smith's book, "there's a deep, dark subway of despair that rumbles underneath his riffs, and that's what makes Love Monkey more than a stand-up routine."

Smith tries for an update of the Charles Dickens Christmas classic with A Christmas Caroline. Here, the role of Scrooge is taken over by a haughty fashion industry executive named Caroline, whose poor attitude gets her fired, costs her a therapist, and finds her dateless for the holidays. As with the Dickens original, Caroline is visited by three spirits who try to reform her. They take the forms of a fashion model, a mail delivery guy, and, less originally, a ghoulish skeleton as the ghost of the Future. In Smith's version, Caroline does become a somewhat better person by story's end, though she remains stubbornly self-centered. Lindsay Soll, writing in Entertainment Weekly, considered the novel to be "incredibly contrived." Similarly, a Kirkus Reviews contributor felt that "Smith spreads himself too thin" in trying to spoof modern society while also sticking with the Dickens model of redemption. "The Scrooge is the same," concluded the reviewer, "but the message is muffled."