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THE SKY IS FAR AWAY

Name: THE SKY IS FAR AWAY
Author: Brooks Wright
ISBN: 978-1-36-730368-3

by Brooks Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2016

An often provocative compilation that shows remarkable range.

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In Wright’s debut collection of short stories, desperate characters look for answers to pressing questions and bump up against life’s disinterest in providing them.

There is an impressive variety of characters in these tales. Young people from middle America break windows, buy sextants, or join the circus. Grown men with checkered military histories look for moral resolve in diplomatic work and comfort in routinely shined shoes. Some stories take place in developing countries, where child soldiers are dosed with drugs and orphans run away from villages in search of birth mothers. Others feature motorcyclists taking pit stops at gig jobs and small-town dive bars. Despite the collection’s variety, however, there’s also a strong, unifying thread throughout: all the characters seem to exist in what Wright describes as “that moment between budding and fading when the truth of everything unfolds right in front of you.” Younger characters at once delight in escape fantasies and face disappointing realities. Older ones grapple with attempts to remedy past errors and are humbled by the ways in which their hard-earned principles fail them. The stories ask: where does one go to figure things out? To war, to church, to peace work, to the road? The book doesn’t offer an answer, but it does force readers to experience the disquiet of confronting the question. In addition to skillfully sustaining such philosophical tension, Wright has a knack for rendering desolate landscapes and depicting spirited characters, which makes for poignant juxtapositions, and he also shows a natural ear for cadence. That said, the prose can feel imprecise at times, which weakens its impact: “And when he foretold her future, as when he threatened to make her disappear, his magic was no magic at all, but sorcery.”

An often provocative compilation that shows remarkable range.

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-36-730368-3

Page Count: 269

Publisher: Blurb

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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 GREAT ALONE
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.