Sturdy characters and an endless batch of surprises make the glaring translation problems relatively easy to overlook.
Getting the largest piece of a wealthy man’s inheritance may drive his children to undertake a few bad deeds, including murder, in the English-language version of Douglas’ debut thriller.
When billionaire Robert Stanley is run down in an automobile accident in Corsica, his three grown children feel they deserve a sizable chunk of his estate. After all, their relationships with their father have been strained for years after his affair with their governess, Rosa, led to their mother’s suicide. And they need the money: Judge Thomas Stanley, the oldest brother, is enamored with Connie, who has expensive tastes; fashion designer Carmen is paying off a blackmailer; and polo player Billy has a heroin addiction. But everything changes with the appearance of Jennifer Stanley, Robert’s illegitimate daughter with Rosa. Someone wants controlling interest in Stanley Enterprises—not to mention even more money—and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it, even murder. Douglas does an outstanding job establishing the story’s characters. Robert, for example, is undoubtedly the villain, callously sending his kids to separate schools when it was clear that they blamed him for their mother’s death. But the children are well-developed, particularly Thomas and Carmen, whose self-made careers are the result of showing Robert that they could make something of themselves. The novel is shrouded in mystery and brimming with plot twists: there’s the strange family man who watches his son’s baseball game before breaking into the office of Robert’s attorney and the children exhuming Robert’s body (for a DNA test to prove that Jennifer is related) and finding an empty coffin. Likewise, the story is bolstered by a bit of dark humor, like the French police captain who stalls releasing Robert’s body to lawyer George so he can soak up the press’ attention for as long as possible. The translation to English from Spanish unfortunately hits some stumbles, with an abundance of typos and odd phrasings, including an explanation of the title: “[Robert] looks at one of the crew member almost angry and this change his mood. He obviously has a very bad mood.”
Sturdy characters and an endless batch of surprises make the glaring translation problems relatively easy to overlook.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1614000037
Page Count: 478
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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