A provocative and well-told story about chosen community, friendship, and human frailty.
When a woman’s personal and professional lives unravel simultaneously, things will feel off-kilter.
It’s 2011. Stevie, an untenured writing teacher at a university in New York, is trying to parent her 8-year-old daughter, Sasha, at least on the days that the child lives with her. At other times, Sasha is in the East Village with dad Aaron, and while the adults' relationship is not contentious, it is certainly not easy. Meanwhile, Stevie’s best friend, Mel, who’s in a long-term relationship with a woman, has been having sex with a man she works with and, at the age of 42, has become pregnant. Should she have the baby? she wonders. What does Stevie think? Clearly, both options have pros and cons. Stevie is further stressed by something she saw on the first day of the fall semester: A student jumped to her death from the roof of the glass-walled building in which Stevie teaches, her body free falling onto the pavement as the class watched in shock. It’s a haunting, horrific image. Days later, when Stevie visits an impromptu on-campus memorial, she meets a homeless teenage runaway named Johanna who also saw the suicide. This bonds them. The backdrop to all this is Occupy Wall Street; the encampment allows each character to address society’s failings and dream about other ways of living and being. And then there’s sex—lots of graphic sex as Stevie barhops to feel less distraught over the dissolution of her marriage. It’s a complex plot involving loads of people, and their relationships are messy and often fueled by drugs and alcohol. Written with a keen ear for dialogue and an exceptional eye for detail, the novel is a showcase for the everyday reality of working-class intellectuals living in an increasingly gentrified city.
A provocative and well-told story about chosen community, friendship, and human frailty.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-936932-68-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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