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THE ENCHANTMENT OF LILY DAHL

Name: THE ENCHANTMENT OF LILY DAHL
Author: Siri Hustvedt
ISBN: 0-8050-4920-7

by Siri Hustvedt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1996

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Hustvedt's second outing abandons the cerebral regions of postmodernism (The Blindfold, 1992) and turns to the familiar melodramas of small-town gothic. Nineteen-year-old Lilly Dahl lives in Webster, Minnesota, rooms over the main-street cafe where she works as waitress, and has ambitions of becoming an actress—she's learning, in fact, the role of Hermia for a local production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dream-world of Shakespeare's play and the events here befalling the hapless Lilly are often dovetailed neatly enough by Hustvedt, but at the same time her heroine's credibility-stretching tale of perversion, mystery, and obsession groans with the familiar. The seeming start of things was the long-ago killing of a woman named Helen Bodler, whose farmer husband is said by some to have buried her alive. Waitress Lilly serves breakfast daily to Helen's now-grown sons, the demented and unwashed bachelor farmers Frank and Dick, and to another distant relative of the dead Helen's, the eccentric loner Martin Petersen, ex-childhood playmate of Lilly herself. When eerie things start happening, then, there is no dearth of suspects—excluding neither Mabel Wasley, Lilly's 78- year-old neighbor who types all night and has secrets aplenty up her sleeve, nor Ed Shapiro, the handsome artist and out-of-towner who knows all about opera, works on his mysterious canvases all night—and steals Lilly's susceptible heart. When new murders and spectral sightings (of Lilly herself, no less) are reported, our feisty heroine turns fearless gumshoe (``She froze and held her breath. . . . But Lily knew that she was going to lurch headlong into whatever was waiting for her''), managing finally not only to expose all but to play a cool hand when Ed Shapiro at last offers to waft her away to New York City. Mystery, murder, and provincial caricatures, all in a readable but curiously dusty mix from a writer whose aims seemed higher the first time around. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-8050-4920-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MOTHERS, FATHERS, AND OTHERS
by Siri Hustvedt

- BOOK REVIEW
MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE
by Siri Hustvedt ; illustrated by Siri Hustvedt

- BOOK REVIEW
A WOMAN LOOKING AT MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN
by Siri Hustvedt

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.