The raw and riveting Chinese stories siphon narrative juice from the more conventional American angst that dominates the...
A group of Americans plan to adopt daughters from China through an agency founded by a bereaved mother, in Hood’s moving novel (The Knitting Circle, 2007, etc.).
Maya walked away from her husband Adam and her formerly happy life in Hawaii after the accidental death of her infant daughter left her in emotional freefall. (The exact circumstances surrounding the accident are not revealed until halfway through the novel.) In part to assuage her anguish, Maya started The Red Thread Adoption Agency, referring to a Chinese saying that a red thread connects people destined to be together. Operating out of Providence, R.I., Maya conducts her latest orientation of a group of couples embarking on the yearlong (or more) process of adopting abandoned Chinese girl babies. Without exception, the wives initiate the adoptions. Theo is bored by ovulation-driven sex with wife Sophie and, still a globetrotting beach bum at heart, views children only as a threat to freedom. Emily, whose efforts to win over her teenage stepdaughter Chloe have netted rejection, unwittingly abetted by her husband Michael, seeks family equilibrium. Nell and Benjamin Walker-Adams, New England aristocrats (he’s descended from John Adams) have given up on Nell’s mood-bending fertility treatments, but she’s experiencing the most untrammeled baby-lust of her charmed life. Brooke, married to ex–Major Leaguer Charlie, yearns to fill the void left by her sterility, but Charlie thinks three’s a crowd, until suddenly their attitudes reverse. Susannah, ambivalent about and vaguely shamed by the retarded daughter her husband Carter adores, wants a “normal” child. Interspersed throughout are italicized vignettes about Chinese mothers forced by the quota on children and prejudice against girls to make wrenching decisions.
The raw and riveting Chinese stories siphon narrative juice from the more conventional American angst that dominates the novel. Still, the tale ends with a pleasing sense that the red thread is more than a myth, especially in Maya’s case.Pub Date: May 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-07020-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
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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