bookshelf

BUYING BRAZIL

Name: BUYING BRAZIL
Author: Arthur J. Rawl

From the Buying Brazil Trilogy series , Vol. 1

by Arthur J. Rawl ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2017

A high-finance novel that bogs down in deals, meals, and spinning its wheels.

bookshelf

In this Brazil-set financial thriller, a British merchant banker tries to broker a delicate telecom deal.

After decades of military rule, Brazil began a process of redemocratization in 1985. In the late 1990s, its government began to open up the economy to privatization. Englishman Carlton “Carl” Matthews, 45, is the senior vice president of acquisitions for American company Laser Telecom (sometimes spelled “Lazer” in the text), which wants to go global. To that end, Carl is in São Paulo to acquire BrasTel, the state-owned telecommunications company. With him is business partner Robin Stephens, 40, who understands the nitty-gritty of dealmaking, and the boss’ son, Skip Watson, who, at 26, is more interested in chasing women than doing business. It’s a touchy deal, and several people warn Carl that he needs to understand the “real Brazil” to carry it out. Sure enough, complications ensue; for example, military factions are still in play in the government, with the most powerful figure being Gen. Ignacio Aranni. His ward, Alana, a beautiful young woman, takes a romantic interest in Carl, who’s besotted with her immediately. As various international players move their chess pieces in this high-stakes game, Carl must avoid danger while putting together the deal of his life—one that will leave him richer than ever. Debut author Rawl, CEO of Rawl & Associates, comes from the high-finance world he describes, and he provides much authentic detail in describing the complications of international dealmaking. The density of these details, however, will offer little excitement to most readers: “The base case and the downside models have one of the risk factors tied to the Morgan index.” The book brings a similar due-diligence attitude to every meal, lingering on food, wine, and cigar choices in ways that don’t advance plot or reveal character. These longueurs make the book a slow read despite some dramatic episodes of violence or sex. The ending is unresolved, but Rawl promises more installments of a planned series.

A high-finance novel that bogs down in deals, meals, and spinning its wheels.

Pub Date: April 3, 2017

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 553

Publisher: Rawl and Associates

Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

bookshelf

THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

bookshelf

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

- AWARDS
Mantel, Woodson on Women’s Prize Longlist

- SEEN & HEARD
Reese’s Book Club Reveals April Pick

bookshelf

THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

bookshelf

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.