In Strickland’s novel, one person’s messiah is another’s juvenile delinquent.
Annie Mullard had it all—a great job as an airline pilot, a handsome and successful husband, three beautiful children and a big house in Chicago. When the recession hits, Annie loses her job and the comfortable life she has known begins to collapse; her husband is cheating on her, her kids don’t like her and the family’s financial situation is so tight that she has to wheel her clothing down to the Golden Coin Laundromat when the washing machine breaks. Annie is fed up, frustrated and seriously depressed. Although she prays for help, the sudden appearance of Violet at the Laundromat is not what she had in mind. Violet looks like a goth teenager and claims to be a messiah who can help Annie change her life though the power of positive thinking. Yet Annie is full of doubts, expressing understandable incredulity at Violet’s claims and scoffing at the idea that she can simply choose to be happy. Annie is a challenging case, and Violet spends nearly 23 chapters (set almost exclusively within the walls of the dingy Laundromat) trying to convince Annie that changing her thoughts and her attitude is the key to changing her life. As a teaching method, and further proof that she just may be a messiah, Violet beams Annie into past lives and even a possible future, forcing Annie to truly reflect on her attitude and her choices thus far. Slowly, Annie realizes that she just might possess the power to will her way to happiness. Strickland, in her second novel, effectively combines the earnestness of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life with the didactic voice of The Secret. With its timely, relatable story peppered liberally with pop-culture references and religious conviction, Strickland’s novel should strike a chord with readers who will relate to Annie’s struggles and search for a happier future. A lesson in faith and the power of positive thinking, all nestled within a satisfying story.
Pub Date: March 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0981979458
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Kim Strickland-Sargent
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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