Transcends the common thriller while examining contemporary disregard for privacy.
A compelling, thoughtful thriller that follows a couple’s attempt to escape danger.
In a world where we are forever watching and being watched, can anyone truly keep a secret? This question churns at the center of Miles’ (The Shootings At Summerhill High School, 2012) novel, a tale of deception and intrigue that also serves as a troubling commentary on the loss of privacy. Blissfully celebrating their first anniversary, newlyweds Derrick and Rhiannon Brewster escape to a remote cabin in the mountains. While eating at a restaurant just before their retreat, they witness a horrifying murder. Sen. Wilkins, suspected of being behind a brutal political campaign designed to shut out the democratic candidate, is accosted by an eager young journalist. The senator pulls a gun on the young man and kills him in front of a restaurant full of witnesses; it’s caught on video for good measure. Predictably, the video goes viral, both on news channels and, in an uncut version, all over the Internet. Derrick, a journalist, now finds his job hanging in the balance for having fled the scene of the crime rather than reporting it. Rhiannon’s unwitting appearance in the video astounds one viewer. Rhiannon had foiled Marc David Anthony’s attempt at creating an international data mining operation; she then took on a new identity and went into hiding, unbeknownst to her new husband. Anthony tracks Rhiannon and sends professional hitmen to her house, making it clear he’s thirsty for revenge. The couple soon lands in intense danger, needing to find strength from within themselves and from each other. Suspenseful and captivating, Derrick and Rhiannon’s story brims with love and intrigue as they travel the country in search of safety. Miles tells a fast-paced story that explores what can happen to a couple when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.
Transcends the common thriller while examining contemporary disregard for privacy.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-1480272569
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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