Clichéd plot and stereotyped characters won’t stand in the way, for those who like them, of the pleasures of a family...
In her seventh, a southern gothic about family secrets (but no mystery), Smith (On Bear Mountain, 2001, etc.) keeps nothing secret for long—and makes some curious authorial choices in her longwinded revelations of who done it, why, and how all the families are intertwined.
Darl Union, a poor little rich girl being raised by her grandmother, Swan Hardigree, a woman as cold and hard as the marble quarry that produces her fortune, has no friends except the granddaughter of Swan’s elegant mulatto assistant, Matilda. One day a stonecutter’s family arrives, and soon enough Darl and the son, Eli Wade, fall in love. Few will be surprised to learn that some generations back there was a love that crossed color lines, and that as a result the Wades, Swan, and Matilda are all related. When Aunt Clara, Swan’s no-good sister (a femme fatale from central casting), arrives demanding money, it’s clear that she’ll come to a bad end. And Darl is there when she does, killed by Grandmother Swan and buried in the Stone Flower Garden. Family loyalty demands that Darl say nothing when Eli’s father is accused of being the one responsible for Clara’s disappearance—and is killed as a result. Twenty-five years later, Darl is a defense lawyer specializing in death penalty cases, trying to appease the guilt that torments her. A mysterious man enters her life and, though she doesn’t recognize Eli, the reader is privy to his secret identity all along. When Darl finally discovers who Eli is, she takes him to the Stone Flower Garden and digs up Clara’s bones, thereby proving his father’s innocence and clearing the way for Eli and her to acknowledge their mutual love.
Clichéd plot and stereotyped characters won’t stand in the way, for those who like them, of the pleasures of a family romance in lush settings.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-80094-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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