Jones (Last Year’s River, 2001, etc.) has written a most American of novels, bristling with hard truths.
Eli Singer is a renowned poet whose artistic sensibilities are like "[Wendell] Berry meets Bukowski," but his elegant verse is crafted by a haunted man.
Remote eastern Montana is a place where the wind, cold, and isolation break men and drive women mad, and so it was for 12-year-old Eli’s mother. First a housekeeper for Buddy Singer, bachelor rancher, and then his wife, she struggled with loneliness, boredom, and her failure as a parent. Eli and his 14-year-old sister, Emma, took their stepfather's name, but soon Emma ran away to share the bed of a neighboring rancher three times her age. There was a scandal, then two people died. Decades later, only Eli knows the true story, which comes in flashbacks that expand the scope and deepen the resonance of this tale, one of love and family set against a rugged Old West ethos. It begins after middle-aged Eli is pulled from his isolation by Chloe Barnes. Eli makes a rare trip to New York City to meet with his publisher, and while there, he is introduced to Chloe, a literary agent. The attraction is mutual and magnetic. First, it’s all telephone calls, but then Chloe flies to Montana, and two damaged souls stumble toward connection. Soon, though, the love story is framed by a clash of morality. A thunderstorm exposes a hidden grave; a murdered man surfaces, the corpse suspiciously secreted on Eli’s land inherited from Buddy. Both Eli and Chloe are thoroughly human, flawed people yet sympathetic protagonists. Chloe seeks a hero, a protector, stability. Eli is guilt-ridden, closed off, gut-wrenchingly lonely. With broad strokes painting an eastern Montana landscape and flashes of insight about the people who cling to its land, Jones rides past the softer romances of Nicholas Sparks into the hard country populated by the best of Western writers.
Jones (Last Year’s River, 2001, etc.) has written a most American of novels, bristling with hard truths.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 9781632460455
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Ig Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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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