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BEAT

Name: BEAT
Author: Amy Boaz
ISBN: 978-1-57962-186-5

by Amy Boaz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2009

Satisfyingly subtle and rich.

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Boaz follows her debut (A Richer Dust, 2008) with another finely wrought novel rooted in literary history.

Here it’s a member of the Beat Generation who provokes the narrator’s desire and dilemma. Frances, an attractive young woman who was formerly a magazine editor in New York, chronicles her sojourn in Paris with her precociously inquisitive seven-year-old daughter. Cathy has a lot to inquire about, because she knows more than she should about her mother’s relationship with Joseph Pasternak, an older poet for whom Frances has all but ended her marriage. (Boaz throws in plenty of Kerouac references, though the outdoorsy Pasternak more resembles Gary Snyder.) A series of flashbacks reveals what drove Frances to Paris. She meets Joseph at a wedding and, restless since childbirth put an end to sex with her dependable, boring husband, pursues and steals him away from his common-law wife, a better-known poet with the unfortunate name of Arlene Manhunter. However, all is not what it seems. Apparently the previously married Joseph hasn’t confined his affections to Frances, and he is now incarcerated in Colorado after the disappearance of Arlene, which may be a crime in which Frances may be complicit. What initially seems like a literary soap opera with traces of a mystery evolves into an acute character study in which Frances reveals essential truths about herself. “We want romance because it will change our lives and we want desperately to change our lives,” she reflects. But lives don’t always change for the better, and those changes can have a profound effect on others close to the lovers. Frances is so concerned with herself that she barely notices the impact on Cathy of being exiled to Paris with a mother in flight from a broken marriage, on the lam from the law—or perhaps both.

Satisfyingly subtle and rich.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-1-57962-186-5

Page Count: 198

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
BECAUSE YOU ARE MINE
by Amy Boaz

- BOOK REVIEW
A RICHER DUST
by Amy Boaz

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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.