Delinsky's first hardcover squeezes a novel out of short-story material about three sisters whose manipulative mother stages an unorthodox family reunion. When she was 27, Ginny St. Clair had an affair with Will Cray, the gardener at Star's End, the home she and her husband rented one summer in Maine. Now 70, she has purchased Star's End and summons her three daughters, who have little to do with one another, to spend two weeks at the house—without telling them that she won't be there. Caroline, obsessive about her work as a lawyer, is romantically linked with Ben Hammer, an artist who maintains a balanced view of his life. Annette, obsessive about her role as wife and mother (and basically a retread of a character in last year's Suddenly), is married to Jean-Paul Maxime, a neurosurgeon who maintains a balanced view of his life. (Catching the offensive pattern here?) Finally there is Leah, a twice-divorced Washington, DC, socialite, with an insignificant life and no man at all. This means that she is free to meet Will's son Jesse Cray, the current gardener at Star's End, and reenact her mother's romance of decades ago, this time with the requisite happy ending. Delinsky, who has offered adequate portrayals of small-town New Englanders in previous works, disappoints even in this respect. Plain old locals- -those who are not transplants from major cities, or world travelers (like Jesse), or artists who sell ``to kings...and movie stars''—are little more than vaudeville-style clowns here. As the story putters along, the sisters, despite years of mutual indifference, become great friends. Meanwhile, dipping into Ginny's old romance, the story sugarcoats the self-centeredness she displays up through her own melodramatic return to Star's End. Bypass this and dig out one of Delinksy's old paperbacks. (First printing of 100,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: June 29, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-017618-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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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