From Amazon.com
Christopher Buckley is not so much a novelist as a free-ranging satirist looking for targets. In
Thank You for Smoking it was big tobacco and earnest reformers; in
God Is My Broker it was business and religion; and in
No Way to Treat a First Lady, it's the entire legal profession, not to mention the Washington establishment. The novel opens with the President of the United States returning to the conjugal bed after an illicit Lincoln Bedroom romp with the Streisandesque Babette Van Anka. His wife, the long-suffering Beth McMann, promptly clocks him with a Paul Revere spittoon. Several hours later he dies. "Lady Bethmac," as the First Lady is immediately dubbed by the media, is put on trial, and the resulting media circus gives Buckley lots of opportunity for nicely observed skewerings of legal culture. "Judge Dutch creaked forward in his chair. This is the source of the aura of judges: they have bigger chairs than anyone else. That and the fact that they can sentence people to sit in electrified ones. It's all about chairs." He gets in some neat neologisms--a lawyer performs a "credibilobotomy" on a witness--and sends up the pretensions of law TV: at a roundtable discussion, the guest from Harvard Law is invited "to provide gravitas and to shift uneasily in his seat when the other guests said something provocative." Buckley's Trial of the Millennium is so far-fetched that it seems entirely possible.
--Claire Dederer
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Matheson brings all the skills one would expect of an experienced actor to Buckley's latest romp. In a story that's equal parts satire and courtroom drama, Buckley (Thank You for Smoking) slings barbs at lawyers, politicos and Washington's social elite. After President Ken MacMann returns from a lusty night in the Lincoln Bedroom with actress Babette Van Anka, his wife, Elizabeth, hurls insults and a priceless Paul Revere spittoon at him. When MacMann is found dead the next morning with the word "Revere" embossed on his forehead, the first lady becomes the prime suspect. Buckley lays his cards openly on the table: one lawyer is nicknamed "Shameless," while another's last name is Crudman. And Matheson captures them all, whether rendering Shameless Baylor's mock indignation at being refused a preposterous motion or evoking the arrogant commentary on a show called Hard Gavel. He also does excellent turns as the flighty, would-be Middle East peace activist Van Anka, a host of other witnesses and the no-nonsense judge who tries to keep the Trial of the Millennium in check. This may not be the year's most substantive audio, but with a plot that seems just crazy enough to be true and a crisp performance by Matheson, it never fails to entertain.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
by Christopher Buckley
by Christopher Buckley
by Christopher Buckley
by Christopher Buckley
by Christopher Buckley
