CANR
WORK TITLE: TELESHOP USA
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Toyko
STATE:
COUNTRY: Japan
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Birth name Craig Hamilton.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Shopping channel host, investment banking management consultant. Hosted Canada’s The Shopping Channel, 1987.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
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Stash Cairo is the pseudonym for Craig Hamilton, a management consultant in the investment banking industry based in Tokyo. He previously hosted The Shopping Channel, now TSC, a Canadian company owned by Rogers Sports & Media. As a young adult novelist, Cairo writes about the popular music scene.
The “Garland Fast” duology begins with Garland Fast, which features an opposites attract meet cute. Dylan Augustus is an investment banker consultant living in Tokyo who visits Los Angeles for a film festival. In a coffee shop on Venice Beach, he bumps into the beautiful Garland Fast, a pop music superstar who sells out stadiums and has a never-ending cashflow. They instantly fall in love and fly in Garland’s private jet to England so she can work on her new album. But as Garland strives to introduce Dylan to her high-speed life of paparazzi and cosmetics endorsements, the mismatched couple clashes over issues of privacy and back-biting rivals. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews noted: “Garland is a captivating, nuanced character, prone to deep introspection and temper tantrums,” but the story might be more effective from Garland’s point of view, rather than Dylan’s. Nevertheless, the book is “An intriguing but uneven opposites-attract tale,” said the contributor.
Book two of the series, Tangent Sisters, is a prequel in which Garland Fast is a 15-year-old in Milwaukee growing up with a single mother and younger sister struggling to make ends meet. Her skills playing guitar and piano and singing are her chance to find riches and fame. After taking the attitude that nothing will get in the way of her dreams, she enters a brutal audition process for a girl group and endures a grueling schedule filled with voice coaches, choreography, body shaming, and nasty competition.
Cairo’s TeleShop USA, set in 1987, follows a high-school dropout as he challenges himself to become the host of a television shopping channel. Wayward Robert MacKenzie is pushing 25 and hasn’t found his niche in life, so he falsifies his references, and fakes his way through an audition and practice hosting routine to get the job. Robert contends with the obstacles of television production, the devolution of the network’s top salesman, bruised egos, and the media company’s buyout. According to a Kirkus Reviews critic: “the details about the machinations of the home shopping industry feel authentic and impressively well researched. Cairo taps into a niche market rarely explored in fiction.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 6, 2022, review of Garland Fast; March 1, 2024, review of TeleShop USA.
ONLINE
Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (September 18, 2023), review of Tangent Sisters.
Currently based in Tokyo, Stash Cairo has lived in Asia for twenty years. He works as a management consultant in the investment banking industry.
Cairo, Stash TELESHOP USA Richards & Jones (Fiction Fiction) $21.99 12, 6 ISBN: 9798986395661
An aimless high school dropout challenges himself with a brand-new career path in Cairo's novel.
It's 1987, and Oklahoma City-based TV network TeleShop USA, anchored by a dynamic cast of seasoned presenters, has become a popular destination for shop-at-home customers. Hoping to leave behind his restless, vagabond, "unstructured" lifestyle, Robert MacKenzie, 25, waits in the wings to unknowingly seize the opportunity of a lifetime. MacKenzie desperately needs a job, and, despite having zero qualifications or experience in television production (and using falsified references), he interviews with company brass, shams his way through some practice pitches, and is providentially given the chance to prove himself at TeleShop. From this point, the narrative masterfully marches out a series of cleverly depicted program hosts, management personnel, and TeleShop employees. Chief among them is Dave Leonard, 43, better known as "the Dealmaker," the network's top salesman and TV's unmatched "King of Bargains." Yet fame has taken its toll, and Leonard has devolved into a snarky, heavy-drinking, unfaithful egomaniac recently dumped by his wife and estranged from his two daughters, living for months in a squalid roadside motel. As New York investors Triboro Media Group begin buying their way toward becoming majority stockholders and decision-makers at the network, management begins to nervously shift their projections and decisions accordingly. The novel works its charms through a series of dubious coincidences, as when MacKenzie takes a room in the same motel as Leonard and makes the most of their spontaneous orientation session, in which the new hire gets the lowdown on the company's inner workings. As MacKenzie is drawn in deeper into the company's fold as one of the newest "rare natural hosts," things begin to fall apart, egos get bruised, rivalries simmer, and alliances form. Along the way, other ambitious and cleverly drawn peripheral characters spark to life within the TeleShop world, including the lonely, impulsive Yasmine Dubai, Director of Talent, who finds herself attracted to MacKenzie; lusty, unhinged assistant corporate counsel Sandiya King, who deceptively vies for Robert's attentions; cutthroat network president Billy-Ray Newton; and Dixie Carter, aka "the Dragon Lady," TeleShop's other intimidating, high-revenue-generating core host, whose specialty is jewelry.
Though much of the plot contrivances are implausible and included for the sake of narrative thrills, the details about the machinations of the home shopping industry feel authentic and impressively well researched. Cairo taps into a niche market rarely explored in fiction and immerses his characters in the high-stress, micromanaged nuances of successful on-air sales and the "steam cooker" atmosphere of televised commerce. ("'For revenue calculation, we then examine each minute as a series of six, ten-second episodes.' 'Doesn't that ever get the place feeling like an emergency room?' 'Exactly.'") In addition to its sudsy melodramatic office dynamics, Cairo's book entertainingly taps into the beginnings of a market that would explode in popularity and profitability on multiple media platforms in the ensuing decades. Readers will cheer on MacKenzie as the formerly underachieving underdog tries to right his path and make the best of his life and career.
Frenzied corporate machinations abound in this frothy re-creation of the early days of the home shopping industry.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Cairo, Stash: TELESHOP USA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A784238423/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=99ce47de. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024.
Cairo, Stash GARLAND FAST Richard & Jones (Fiction Fiction) $21.99 8, 25 ISBN: 979-8986395609
In this novel, an American living abroad falls for a world-famous pop star.
Dylan Augustus comes from Chicago money and a family of achievers, but now he lives in Tokyo and has a contract gig coaching businesses ("helping investment bankers and consultants with their English PowerPoints"). In his spare time, he secretly works on his novels. When the 28-year-old writer visits Los Angeles for a cult film festival, a chance encounter at a Venice Beach coffee shop will change his life forever. Garland Fast is also 28 and her music--guitar, vocals, and songwriting--has taken her from poor Wisconsinite and fledgling teenage girl-group member to a superstar with sold-out stadium tours, real estate throughout the world, and never-ending cashflow. She uses the money to pay her loyal assistant, Alexis Fisher, and to support her mom, Barbara; her young niece, Emma; and her sister, Julie, a talented guitarist and bassist with a pattern of abusive relationships. After initially butting heads, Garland and Dylan connect over pizza and Game of Thrones marathons as well as a healthy dose of bedroom gymnastics. Could this be love? Dylan is besotted with the gorgeous Garland but worries he's in over his head. Used to getting exactly what she wants when she wants it, Garland tries to give Dylan the world and doesn't understand that he wishes to make his own way. And when Duchess Sugoi, Garland's rival, sets her sights on Dylan, he wonders if his fling-turned-relationship is built to last. Readers will relish getting a behind-the-scenes look into the life of a music superstar: the perks of private jets, Centurion credit cards, and glamorous partnerships with cosmetic companies as well as the downsides of pop-star backbiting, relentless paparazzi, and a complete lack of privacy. Garland is a captivating, nuanced character, prone to deep introspection and temper tantrums--so much that Cairo's novel, at least 100 pages longer than it needs to be, might have been more effective from her perspective rather than that of her boyfriend. Dylan often comes off as self-righteous, explaining movies and even music to a famous pop diva and her family and staff.
An intriguing but uneven opposites-attract tale.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Cairo, Stash: GARLAND FAST." Kirkus Reviews, 6 Oct. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A721918216/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=224c45a5. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024.
TANGENT SISTERS
BY STASH CAIRO ‧ RELEASE DATE: AUG. 4, 2023
A music-soaked fantasy whose frenetic plot is overshadowed by tired stereotypes and the sexualization of underage girls.
BOOKSHELF
SHOP NOW
Ateenager finds her world rocked when she auditions to become a member of a brand-new girl group in Cairo’s YA novel.
Fifteen-year-old Garland Fast is a high school student living with her younger sister and a single mother who struggles to make ends meet. She desperately dreams of escaping Milwaukee and starting a new life filled with money and fame—so when her best friend, Candace, mentions auditions for a new girl group at a local recording studio, Garland jumps at the chance. She manages to snag an audition invite from Kendra, a peer Candace refers to as “a bit of a slut.” Despite some obstacles along the way—including the need to convince her mom to sign a parental permission slip to advance in the competition and the increasingly brutal audition process, which involves one-on-one practice with a vocal coach and mastery of recording skills, and choreography—Garland impresses record executive Donnell Booker, who is dazzled by the teenager’s ability to read music. When she discovers she’s included in the final two groups of girls, Garland feels her dream come tantalizingly close: “It would not be accurate to say the following release of nerves was so powerful it bordered on the sexual. It was sexual. There was no bordering about it. Garland was a virgin and didn’t smoke, yet in that moment, she understood the desire for an after-sex cigarette.” Garland and her fellow competitors struggle to stay on top as they are expected to work 12 hours a day, six days per week. A shocking change to the initial concept of a five-person musical group leaves all the girls reeling, and Garland makes a serious mistake that could cost her everything.
Cairo manages to get in some shrewd digs at the music industry as a whole, with Donnell admitting that, while they can’t say it aloud, anyone who is overweight or “not pretty” doesn’t stand a chance at the auditions. The author also offers occasional food for thought when it comes to music’s universal appeal: “Any song could be a girl group song. Any song could be a black song. All that mattered was attitude, passion, and harmony.” Unfortunately, any minor insights that the novel may offer are consistently and thoroughly overshadowed by a host of problematic elements. These include rampant sexism (“What [he] also recognized was the natural jealousy of women. They didn’t operate in the same manner as men”); victim blaming (Donnell admits to sleeping with an underage girl, then claims his “only excuse is her single-mindedness—she doesn’t take no for an answer”); and a graphic, multi-page scene of 16-year-old Garland—who, readers are repeatedly reminded, is a virgin—masturbating to thoughts of her much older mentor while reminiscing about the hardcore rape porn that she likes to watch. The result of all of this is a narrative that feels like a caricature of what teenage girls look like, act like, and feel—with little to no sense of any authenticity. And that presents a huge hurdle when it comes to getting readers to care about what happens to Garland and her friends.
A music-soaked fantasy whose frenetic plot is overshadowed by tired stereotypes and the sexualization of underage girls.
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Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2023
ISBN: 9798986395647
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Richards & Jones
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2023