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MIDNIGHT IS A LONELY PLACE

Name: MIDNIGHT IS A LONELY PLACE
Author: Barbara Erskine
ISBN: 0-525-93862-1

by Barbara Erskine ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1994

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Initially gripping, Erskine's follow-up to her successful Lady of Hay (1987) ultimately reads like a bad TV movie. British biographer Kate Kennedy rents a cottage in North Essex to write her new book and recover from a soured relationship with immature Jon Bevan. The landlord's son Greg, a talented painter frustrated by his lack of opportunity, is enraged when his parents rent ``his'' cottage to Kate. When doors start slamming, her computer goes haywire, and maggot-infested dirt piles appear in the cottage, Kate blames Greg. Meanwhile the tide and some digging by Greg's sister uncover a Roman/Druid grave that has lain untouched for centuries, releasing the ghosts of an ill-fated love triangle. This horror/thriller manages to work in a little bit of fascinating history about Boudicca, a Celtic warrior queen who rose against the Romans, and it offers some insight into Celtic/Roman relations. Erskine wisely shies away from the clichÇ of reincarnation, opting instead for demonic possession, but the three spirits illogically possess different people and wreak different levels of havoc. The author could have pumped new blood into this tired genre by further elaborating her theme of colonization, whether Londoners' gentrification of East Anglia or British authors' economic need to pander to an American market. Instead she just throws more players into the soup, including Kate's sister, the now remorseful Jon, an unhappy neighboring family, an unflappable taxi driver, and Kate's publisher. The array of threats from the ghosts would be truly frightening if any of the characters, live or dead, were properly developed. But they seem no brighter than mice in a maze; after almost 100 pages of mindless violence, the anticlimactic ending comes as absolutely no surprise. A near miss. Erskine clearly has some talent; with a little more thought—and more historical research—she could do something wonderful.

Pub Date: July 11, 1994

ISBN: 0-525-93862-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.