Gleeful jumble of Brit-style slapstick, puns, and sly wit. Quite a treat.
Clever potshots from English bestseller Holden (Gossip Hound, 2002, etc.).
Slackmucklethwaite? Where’s that? Next door to the arse end of nowhere, but its inhabitants are a cheerful lot, especially when a posh new development of expensive homes slides into the century-old mining tunnels beneath it. Looks like a front-page story for the local newspaper, the Mercury (affectionately known as the Mockery), and Slackmucklethwaite’s own Lois Lane, Kate Clegg, whips out her pad and pencil—um, she can’t find her pad and pencil. Maybe it’s under the panting, thrusting romance titled Northern Gigolo that she’s penning in her spare time? Well, she still lives with her mum and dad and Gran in a house called Wit’s End, and she’s not going to make a name for herself as a journalist at this rate, is she? Especially not when the Mockery’s new owner, loudmouthed, porcine Peter Hardstone, kills the story. Looks like a conflict-of-interest scandal is brewing, but Kate is distracted by the godlike handsomeness and incandescent sexiness of Peter’s son Nate, who was just thrown out of Oxford for using drugs. He’s a sexy bastard, he is, but could he possibly be the man of her dreams? Oh, dear—he just happened to see her in that yellow-and-tangerine quasi-poncho-tank-top thingy her Gran knitted for her. So maybe not. Oh, who cares about all Hardstones? Kate was working at the paper only for a press credential to go to Cannes and cover the film festival anyway. Off she goes to the land of palm trees and sunshine to goggle at the stars, deal-makers, flacks, and suck-ups who flock there once a year for the next best thing to the Oscars. Holden cuts them all down to size, and our Kate finds true love at last. Along the way, Holden’s deft management of a huge cast of zany types ensures that the breakneck pace never flags.
Gleeful jumble of Brit-style slapstick, puns, and sly wit. Quite a treat.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-452-28517-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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