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SMALL SPACES BETWEEN EMERGENCIES

Name: SMALL SPACES BETWEEN EMERGENCIES
Author: Alison Moore
ISBN: 1-56279-022-6

STORIES

by Alison Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 1992

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Eleven stories, mostly about women in trouble who are drawn to one another—in a first collection that's moving, even when it tends to be formulaic and predictably minimalist. The best here are ``Leaving by the Window,'' about a narrator who travels with her widower father in a series of cars (``After the funeral it seemed we began to look everywhere for her'') until she runs away to New York, where she's raped. ``Rain Dance at Blue Cloud'' concerns a girl whose mother leaves her and whose father deposits her in Custer, South Dakota, at the Blue Cloud Inn, where she works for Louise—the ensuing slice-of-life is evocative and carefully developed. In ``Recovery,'' the narrator meets a new tenant recovering from cancer and befriends her even as the cancer returns in a terminal form. ``The Ways We Hear About It'' follows two daughters who return home to their father and stepmother—where the characters reveal to one another various illnesses and separations. The moments are appropriately small and delicately rendered. The same could be said of the rest. ``News from Another World'' concerns a nursing-home resident who kidnaps a baby for an afternoon; ``Turnaround,'' a father who sees his son for the first time in years and travels with him on crosstown buses; ``Communique,'' a man and a woman who read each other's journals; and ``Boojum,'' a widow dying of cancer who goes to Mexico and comes to an epiphany while staring at a boojum tree out of its habitat, ``a wanderer from a small close-knit clan.'' Such metaphors dazzle and often transcend the bleakness here. A promising writer with a small, honest talent, Moore gives her characters their due and lets them work out their lonely destinies for themselves.

Pub Date: June 8, 1992

ISBN: 1-56279-022-6

Page Count: 192

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
DEATH AND THE SEASIDE
by Alison Moore

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PRE-WAR HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES
by Alison Moore

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LIGHTHOUSE
by Alison Moore

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.