Much fun but falls off.
Screenwriter Wolper’s latest raking over of Hollywood.
Once more she goes on too long, although this is the shortest of her three works. Mr. Famous is an aging action film star on the downslide whose doomed, dark-toned current offering, Last Standing, sounds very much like the doomed, dark-toned Depression-era el floppo flick Last Man Standing that starred Bruce Willis (and was a dullish remake of Kurosawa’s seriocomic action masterpiece Yojimbo). Mr. Famous, or simply Mr. F, is the nickname given to Victor Mason by his chef/nutritionist, failed TV writer Lucinda, who sounds much like failed screenwriter Elizabeth West of Wolper’s Cigarette Girl (1999) and who shows up for a chapter herein, as she did in Secret Celebrity. Mr. Famous has had a literary novel under option for over ten years. He knows he can’t make it until he has two action megahits back to back. Then he’ll be allowed to film Skate, which is almost certain to tank—although Bruce Willis’s extremely low-keyed The Sixth Sense (coasting on Armageddon) had money falling out the bank-windows. Mr. F, going through a midcareer crisis, tends to lock himself into his bedroom for three days running—meals left by the door. So Lucinda sends him off to see her shrink, Dr. Davenport, who tells Mr. F that he’s no longer alive but has turned into, well, Victor Mason, action film star. This really upsets Mr. F, who rants against this clear truth to Lucinda, then takes her on a quickie plane flight to Boston, then by limo to his hometown, Falmouth, on Cape Cod, in search of lost time. Unlike California, Falmouth suffers gray rainy days. But Dr. D’s truth at last works its way through, and Victor gears up for serious acting, teaches a film class, and sets out to save Last Man from the suits. There’s a mini-subplot about Lucinda’s ex-boyfriend stalking her, but that suspense tidbit goes nowhere.
Much fun but falls off.Pub Date: June 7, 2004
ISBN: 1-57322-272-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
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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