A tepid affair by an author capable of incandescence.
A once-happy marriage jumps the tracks when a charismatic writer accepts a fellowship at the small college in upstate New York where both husband and wife work.
Jane and Alan Mackenzie are a model couple. He is a 51-year-old professor of architecture and expert on Victorian-era follies (the faux ruins of stone towers and hermitages Britain’s landed gentry built to enhance their estates); she, 11 years younger, is a quietly in-charge college bureaucrat who runs a program for visiting scholars. Told in alternating chapters from the perspective of husband and wife, the novel charts the disintegration of their marriage, which initially begins to fray when a minor injury on a volleyball court—Alan admits he was showing off for the younger faculty—segues into chronic back pain. Their home life becomes a hellish stand-off between need and resentment. While Jane is stepping and fetching for her husband in her off hours—prescriptions for pain killers, packs of ice, heating pads, more pillows—her day job as administrator is transformed by the arrival of Delia Delaney, renowned writer and unrepentant id-on-wheels. Only Delia’s long-suffering husband Henry knows how demanding she can be: She needs a sofa for her office. Less light. Fewer visitors. A deadbolt on her door. Silence! Jane and Henry find they are on common ground as helpmates—and commiserate with one another, complicating Jane’s self-image as a “good” person. Alan and Delia also discern they have much in common. Delia, who suffers from migraines, helps Alan own his pain, find his inner artist and resurrect his sexuality. Pulitzer Prize–winner Lurie (The Last Resort, 1998, etc.) is a keen observer of consciences in conflict. There are passages here (though too few) that remind the reader of her considerable artistic authority. But the characters rarely act outside selfish motives, and in the end, who cares who ends up with whom? They all deserve each other.
A tepid affair by an author capable of incandescence.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03439-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
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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