A gripping existential thriller in the vein of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games (2006).
A jaded crime novelist retires to a Turkish village on the brink of civil war.
The clichés of noir literature are infamously tricky to navigate, and many of those archetypes and tropes surface in this elegant crime novel by Turkish journalist and author Altan, his first to be translated into English. Thankfully, the author uses both characters and devices to marvelous effect, creating a hallucinatory fiction that reads as much like The Stranger (1942) as it does The Godfather (1969). It begins with a man admitting he has just murdered someone. From there, our nameless narrator (a crime writer, naturally) spins a dizzying tale about the small Turkish village where he enters semiretirement. A world-weary, womanizing writer is a well-worn chestnut, but Altan breathes life into his virile hero with interesting flaws. Taking his place as the “coffeehouse sage” of the village, the writer quickly becomes enmeshed by its internal strife. He falls in love with Zuhal, a woman whose heart belongs to the corrupt mayor, Mustafa Gürz. This doesn’t stop him from dallying with Kamile (the femme fatale wife of a local crime boss) or frequenting the bedroom of Sümbül (a prostitute with a heart of gold). It’s a town laden with gang violence, much of it sparked by the rumor of a Roman treasure buried underneath a Christian church. “It might seem strange to an outsider but after living in the town for long enough you got used to the killing and the fact that certain killers go free,” Altan writes. “It even begins to seem natural for them to shoot each other in broad daylight.” The book isn’t without flaws—Altan is enamored with internet chats between our hero and Zuhal, and readers seeking a traditional whodunit may be left wanting. But readers looking for a contemplative, twisty thriller will find this one unique and satisfying.
A gripping existential thriller in the vein of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games (2006).Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60945-277-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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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