[.ca] The Sun King (ISBN 0812992431)

a disturbing tale:
A tale of a tycoon who comes to town to challenge the powers that be and ends up facing his own challenge with the woman he loves. Sandy Galvin is the Sun King, a billionaire with a talent for taking risks. Galvin arrives in Washington and proceeds to turn the Capital up side down. He buys the city's most powerful newspaper and wields it like a knife. In his way stands his old Harvard flame, Candice Ridgeway a beautiful and icy journalist known around town as the Mistress of Fact. Their encounter is tangled in the mysteries of their past and narrated by David Cantor, who is an acid-tongued reporter, a big Jerry Springer fan, and is drawn into Galvin's life to be transformed by this unpredictable man. Love is the final frontier for a generation of baby boomers, still young enough to reach for their dreams, but old enough to see the prospect of loss. Galvin can light up a room but can he melt the heart or Candice Ridgeway. This is a disturbing tale of ambition and sexual desire. I consider it of mature theme.

Gatsby, Schmatsby:
This is a dorky book but fun. Ignatius is such a wimp, sniveling along, brown-nosing our intelligence with less than an elementary school belief system with his white knight profiling and self-feigned cluelessness. He comes up with some sweet words once in a while which chuckle up just fine. Ignatius is a zen storyteller, performing one of those acts of 'chop wood, become enlightened, chop wood. This book reads fun, yes I had to repeat myself. One has a good time enjoying the story and hoping to all ends of realty that Ignatius doesn't believe half the stuff he's writing.

Gatsby Redux for the 1990s:
Since I've always admired Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," I found "The Sun King" a startling, inventive recreation of Fitzgerald's romantic tale, updated for the 1990s. At first, I was wary--so many scenes and so much of the language seemed to come right out of "Gatsby"! Then I was intrigued by the changes in circumstances necessary to update the novel from the 1920s to the 1990s. What were the circumstances under which the two lovers met and parted? What kept them apart? How would the vastly different roles of men and women in the 1990s change their romance? What was the source of Sandy Galvin's corruption? All these questions (and many others) found more than satisfactory answers in Ignatius's novel. A new Gatsby? You bet! And it is a fascinating look at life inside the Beltway in the 1990s!

DAVID IGNATIUS HAS MATURED!:
FINISHED THIS BOOK IN ONE DAY. SUCH A CHANGE FROM HIS OTHER NOVELS, WHICH I FOUND TO BE MUNDANE AND IMMATURE. ALSO WATCHED HIS VIDEO ON INTERNET REGARDING THIS NOVEL AND SENT AN E-MAIL TO HIM APPLAUDING THIS BOOK. I AM PLEASED THAT HE HAS MOVED AWAY FROM THE SPY STUFF, EVEN IF IT IS JUST THIS ONE BOOK.

5 Suns for Sun King:
David Ignatius is a man of wit, sensitivity, and excellent fancy. He did a great job of creating an update of a Great-Gatsby like novel, with some well drawn wit and sarcasm to boot. But the book stands on it's own as a fantastic and sensitive tale of romance and power. What a tremendous love story! And yes, I did have considerable sympathy for Carl Sandburg Galvin, his Gatsby character. Candace Ridgway is cold ambition in the flesh, a Randian heroine carried to her logical conclusion. A (more) pathetic Hedda Gabbler. Facts are her pistols, and her aim is deadly and true. This is one to cry over, ladies (and gentlemen.)