A humorous and compelling domestic tale about a man pushed to the edge.
A disgraced insurance salesman becomes the neighborhood spy in this comic novel.
When his 10-year-old nephew, Benny, is struck by a hit-and-run driver, Charlie Doyle immediately jumps into action. Unfortunately, Charlie is drunk and isn’t making the best decisions. When he gets Benny to the hospital, the boy has suffered substantial brain damage. Why didn’t Charlie just call an ambulance and let the professionals handle it? That’s what his neighbors begin to whisper about—and whether it was drunk Charlie who hit Benny in the first place. Following the accident, Charlie’s life begins to spiral out of control. He quits his job at an insurance agency, suspects that his wife may be cheating on him with his brother-in-law, and learns that his 18-year-old daughter, Velijah, was recently arrested for stealing booze from a liquor store. Then a sinkhole opens up and ruins Thanksgiving dinner. Charlie gets a job with a different insurance company—a lot of other sinkholes have opened up in the neighborhood—but his mission is actually to prevent people from collecting on their policies. When Charlie embarks on this unethical scheme with his new neighbor, blackmailer Effie Malfeezian, he also hopes to discover who exactly hit Benny. If he can figure out who did it, he may be able to clear his name and fix his family—and maybe even forgive himself. Smith’s (Scabland, 2017) prose walks the fine line between realism and slight absurdity, fashioning intriguingly odd scenarios. “What I’d like you to do, as a Secret Insurance Agent, is watch people,” explains Tammy Williams, Charlie’s handler. “Gather information. Even on people we’ve already paid out claims to on other matters. I want to know where our money is going. And where it’s not going.” The novel ends up in some unexpected (and slightly unbelievable) places, but the author constructs his world with enough logic and detail that readers will be happy to accompany him into the extraordinary. The result is a dark satire of suburban life reminiscent at times of Tom Perrota and A.M. Holmes.
A humorous and compelling domestic tale about a man pushed to the edge.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-08-659635-9
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Out Reach Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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