In this first novel of a planned trilogy, teenager Ron Adams describes how his life is guided by the 196 Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Ron Adams is on his motorcycle, gazing at the Pacific as he’s about to start college in California. He then shifts back to his childhood in Tucson, when he’s about to turn 9. He remembers as a young child seeing his grandpa do “Now yoga” and already being dubbed “Yogi Ron” at school. Local boys came to collect him, telling him that he was now old enough to join “Army Boot Camp,” i.e., shoot BB guns in the park. In the following years, he went along with friends in this and other activities, but he also began receiving a series of numbered Sutra messages, which always appeared by his pillow. As he wrestled with such issues as girls, peer pressure and what to study in college, Ron found insights in these notes, which included concepts such as “supreme non-attachment,” “true-self” and the meditative state of samadhi. His educator parents served as knowing mentors in his discoveries, and the novel concludes with his arrival at college and an encounter with “that girl with the bindi,” who’s likely to figure in the next book of the series. In his preface, Crolene, a physicist who has worked at NASA and penned previous spirituality-focused tomes, notes that “Drs. Melvin and Evangeline Adams decided to bring the Sutras to the education of their only child, starting at the time he learned to talk. The journey is documented here, all in first person as it occurred.” Whether this work is inspired by real life or not, Crolene has created a highly sympathetic character in the sensitive, searching Ron as well as an accessible arena in which to showcase the enigmatic Patanjali sutras. Readers might wish, however, that Crolene had been a bit more succinct with Ron’s musings—“How can human life, scrapings on a tiny planet, be so important that the whole universe exists for its liberation?”—and kept Ron as the narrative’s sole voice, since the occasional switches to other first-person narrators tend to confuse rather than illuminate.
A relatable if complex construct to explain yoga philosophies.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-0988424807
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Zero Point Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2014
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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