Literary roadkill.
Momma heads to Hollywood to track down her errant daughter.
A few years ago, Violet Kincaid vanished from Devine, Texas, population 894, leaving behind a befuddled husband and two helpless babies. Violet’s mom, Ruby, is left to pick up after her daughter’s mess. Ruby takes in Violet’s children, Bubbie and Bunny, and does her best to instill some normalcy into the kid’s lives, but these two urchins are a handful. As the sole proprietress of Devine Bowl, Ruby wasn’t planning to raise children again. As it is, she can barely find time to follow her beloved soap opera. A commercial during the aforementioned soap floors Ruby and her bowling pals—Violet has become a television model. The local hens decide to round up a posse and head to Hollywood in order to reunite Violet with her family. Since Imogene, Violet’s irritating mother-in-law, is the only one in town with a Winnebago and enough money to fund the trip, she serves as the organizer. Ruby’s sister, the oversexed Loralva, is recruited as the driver. This is Loralva’s shot to get on the famous television game show, The Price is Right. Ruby decides to bring the kids along, which turns the Winnebago into a virtual torture chamber. That’s where the MoonPies come in handy; the only way to get Bunny and Bubbie to behave is by bribing them with the sweet and sticky treat. (It’s a bad sign when an item of packaged food is assigned a leading role in a novel.) Once in Hollywood, Ruby keeps coming up against dead ends. She nearly gives up before a trail of MoonPies leads her to Violet. Wallen writes knowingly about big hair and small minds, but she can’t conjure up the magic necessary to bring the road trip to life. The reader wants no part of climbing aboard this particular Winnebago and suffering through Imogene’s endless griping, Bunny’s snot-nosed whining or Bubbie’s gory hijinks. It’s all too clear why Violet left Devine and never looked back.
Literary roadkill.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2007
ISBN: 0-670-03817-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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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