Hard to believe this listless, modestly amusing tale won the Netherlands’ prestigious AKO Prize.
Dutch author Grunberg (Silent Extras, 2001, etc.) traces the rise and fall and rise of a literary writer whose sine waves of desperation are ultimately evened out by his unlikely authorship of a cookbook.
The novel takes the form of Robert Mehlman’s “unpublished autobiography,” presented by son Harpo. Seemingly intended as an explanation to his son of the writer’s bizarre behavior over the course of two decades, its main concerns are Mehlman’s love life and the creation of his cookbook. (Asides cover everything from his multiple affairs to book projects both realized and forgotten.) As the narrative begins, the author’s unstable marriage to a psychiatrist he calls the “Fairytale Princess” is disrupted by the arrival of the “Empty Vessel,” a woman who makes cappuccinos at the local coffeebar. Together, the Empty Vessel and Mehlman spend a directionless few days in Atlantic City, gambling away the last of his money even as his credit cards are overdrawn. The affair meanders here and there, with no particular purpose apparent other than to give Mehlman a chance to toss off such continental-sounding epigrams as “hate is the sea into which longing flows down together.” Meanwhile, having agreed to write a “literary cookbook,” he places a newspaper ad looking for contributions. Polish-Jewish Cooking in 69 Recipes becomes an international sensation, earning Mehlman all the money he’ll ever need. The volume is hailed as a monument of reconciliation between Germans and Jews that will allow both to “keep the home fires burning after Auschwitz”— a mildly tasteless jape typical of the gauzy brand of humor peddled here. The text seems ably translated, if only because it’s difficult to imagine a rendering more apt to the original that might have restored such a desultory work to any kind of greatness.
Hard to believe this listless, modestly amusing tale won the Netherlands’ prestigious AKO Prize.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59051-126-3
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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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