organization using nothing more than Microsoft Excel. Despite the book’s brevity, it is enhanced with numerous figures illustrating causal links for KPIs, lag vs. lead indicators, KPI performance standards and more. Additionally, Talbot and Jakeman reference real-world examples throughout the text. The authors are careful to point out that, despite their value, KPIs require considerable thought in the development stage. One issue, for example, is to be certain KPIs are measuring the right things and addressing the underlying causes: “When things go wrong, it is tempting to allocate blame, ‘kick to contractor,’ or try to dodge responsibility. Unless the KPIs are truly meaningful and can specifically identify poor performance, this strategy is likely to be counterproductive.” Given the authors’ considerable experience in this targeted area, business managers interested in managing risk will find this well-written guide of special value.
has its faults—substandard punctuation and grammar, spelling by ear (“Old Lang Zain,” “By Mir Mister Shane”), haphazardly shifting points of view, far too much unnecessary detail, and wandering timelines—but it is undeniably engaging, much like coming across an old diary. Seeing Rose walk step by step into the life of a kept woman is fascinating, and it’s impressive how well debut author Tarcici depicts the temptations of glamor. Rose’s choices are not unlike those made today by young men who want—for various reasons—to be players in the drug trade. Though her family may disapprove, Rose becomes their main breadwinner; they have to eat somehow. Mercenary and vulgar as Rose is, she has the pluck and the luck to get what she wants. Vivid period details and a forthright heroine help smooth the rough edges of this rags-to-riches story.
REEL LIFE
EAST SIDE STORY
Tarcici, Martha (192 pp.) $17.16 paperback | Sep. 30, 2010 978-1434983213 Rosa Rizzio and her friends take different paths to escape the poverty of New York City’s Lower East Side during the 1940s. In 1942, Rosa Rizzio was a junior high dropout eager to start making money. Growing up during the Great Depression in a crowded, dirty cold-water tenement, she and her Italian-immigrant family lived through grinding poverty. In the time before President Roosevelt’s New Deal and free school lunches, her mother sometimes stole food just to give them one meal a day. Now, with a war raging and jobs plentiful, Rosa charts a path toward financial security that begins with a summer job waitressing, then develops into work as a rumba instructor (she changes her name to Rose Rice). Eventually, by the age of 15, she finds herself becoming the pampered mistress of Sam Cohen, a married garment-industry millionaire. She’d prefer someone young, handsome and single—and also rich— but you can’t have everything. Over the years, one childhood friend marries and moves to Long Island; another goes to college; and still another, Ruthie, on the brink of respectable marriage, throws over her potential husband in order to pursue a richer man, with disastrous results. Rose’s hardheaded gold-digging isn’t that different from her mother’s attitude toward theft: “Her family had to eat somehow. They had to dress somehow. And they had to keep warm somehow. It is a question of survival.” No amount of low-wage work could ever earn her the gowns, jewels and high life she craves, Rose reasons. Her sugar daddy wants to pay, so why not let him? By her own lights, she’s a good friend: “When youse go out with Sam’s friends, don’t be ashamed to axk them for money. If youse don’t, they won’t give youse anything and you’ll wind up with nothen but jelly beans,” she advises Ruthie. The novel 1542
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kirkusreviews.com
Townsend, Jackie Ripetta Press (376 pp.) $9.02 paperback | Feb. 22, 2012 978-0983791508 Two sisters travel a rocky path to selffulfillment—watching some movies along the way—in this reflective debut novel. Betty and Jamie, red-haired siblings just a year apart in age, don’t exactly share a sisterly bond. In an early scene, 9-year-old Betty wishes her younger sister “would pirouette right through the pane glass window.” Seconds later, Jamie injures herself in a fall, and Betty lets her writhe in pain for several minutes before calling for help. It’s an event that sets the tone for the sisters’ future relationship—there’s love between them, but it’s tempered by misunderstandings, jealousy and failures to connect. A difficult home life doesn’t make things easier: Their father is a frustrated actor turned therapist, their mother an ambitious career woman who leaves her husband for another man as her daughters enter adolescence. These formative experiences leave a deep impression, which is apparent as the sisters grow older and make decisions about motherhood, careers and romance. A complex relationship with their moody, troubled mom haunts them, and neither sibling can forgive her failings. Betty copes by overcompensating, embracing her maternal instinct (she has three children) and designing a line of baby clothes. Jamie’s relationship to motherhood is more complicated. Cancer treatments appear to have left her infertile, and her husband is adamant he doesn’t want children. The novel is episodic and shifts between the recent and more distant past. A different film provides the structure for each chapter to indicate both the era and the circumstances of the sisters’ lives—Little Darlings during their teen years in the early 1980s, Breaking the Waves in the mid-’90s when Betty sacrifices her dreams to support her husband’s career. Some of these references work better than others; readers may be more familiar with The Wizard of Oz or Hitchcock’s Vertigo than the less-memorable 1998 film Primary Colors, and the summary of movie plots occasionally distracts from the larger story. From Betty’s infidelity to a shocking revelation from Jamie’s |