A vivid evocation of the conflict between reason and spirituality.
A skeptical lawyer wrestles with a crisis of faith—gaining it, not losing it—as he discovers his own possibly supernatural powers in this debut novel of ideas.
Will Alexander is leading a mediocre, hollow life as an attorney for a Manhattan law firm when he meets Erica Wells, a social worker who incorporates New Age mysticism into her practice. He’s smitten by her green eyes; she’s smitten by his green aura, which only she can sense. Will takes Erica’s disparagement of Western evidence-based medicine in favor of “universal healing and energy”—featuring detoxification, herbal supplements, and regression therapy—for so much nonsense. But he puts up with her eccentric enthusiasms for the sake of her passion and vibrancy. But then, during a chance encounter, Will, with no effort or intention, apparently cures a legal client of an anxiety disorder. Others seek him out: He dispels a tech mogul’s fatal neurological ailment with a few minutes of meditation and sends an old man’s cancer into remission during a night of drinking. Will is nonplussed by all this: He doesn’t feel like he’s doing anything to cure people and thinks his successes might be a placebo effect or pure coincidence. Still, word of mouth creates demand for his services, so he sets up shop as the world’s most diffident healer, warning patients that he claims no special powers and makes no promises and telling them not to pay him unless they feel like it. Will’s self-disparagement perversely inspires trust, and his practice thrives—and makes him a target of a cynical investigative journalist intent on proving him a fraud. Himmel’s entertaining novel is on one level a fine comedy of ideological manners. Much of it unfolds in funny, awkward dinner-table conversations as Erica floats her ardent mystical beliefs and dares her dubious companions to mock them while they search for ways to steer the conversation to safer waters. The author’s sharply etched characters and smart, observant prose shrewdly capture the ways people think and talk about religious and philosophical issues. “I was always struck by how he managed to marshal an articulate discourse in defense of shallow insights,” Will muses of one blowhard, and he calls the earnest, didactic New Age tomes Erica presses on him “Soviet propaganda without the charm.” But the tale takes Will’s hangdog spiritual quest seriously while avoiding the clichés of New Age fiction. There are no revealed certitudes, no channeling of omniscient beings from the astral plane. Will remains a flawed, neurotic man torn between his lawyerly devotion to evidence and logic and the haunting, ambiguous glimpses of supernatural forces that intrude on him. He is perpetually in doubt about whether his abilities are real or just luck and hopeful figments of the imagination—especially when they fail. And they work no miraculous healing in his own life. His new calling often feels like a drag and leads him into a serious ethical lapse; what enlightenment he gains comes through painful experience and self-examination rather than clairvoyance. As he grapples with metaphysical mysteries, even dyed-in-the-wool skeptics should find his struggle compelling.
A vivid evocation of the conflict between reason and spirituality.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62634-530-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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