A caustically witty novel but one that rarely interrupts its superficiality to deliver a deeper meaning.
Silver (The Summer Invitation, 2014, etc.) tracks the friendship of two college grads attempting to make it in New York.
Why attend Bennington, an elite college in Vermont? “To have something interesting to talk about at cocktail parties on Fifth Avenue,” thinks Pansy Chapin, a moneyed graduate and one of this novel’s minor characters. She’s being facetious, but this comment retains a grain of truth as Silver taps into the particular insular culture that stays with the school's graduates—especially best friends Sylvie Furst and Cassandra Puffin—once they leave. Sylvie, who moves to New York almost immediately, is a self-starter with dreams of her own line of artisanal foods, while Cassandra is assured but unfocused, falling into a administrative job and running through a string of luxuriously rich Harvard boyfriends. After a failed relationship, Cassandra moves into Sylvie’s Fort Greene apartment, and at first their life in the city is exciting as they navigate New York’s Bennington social scene. But the friendship begins to fracture as the two clash on work ethics, views on monogamy, and money. It seems the real world is tearing them apart. There are snippy arguments, then dramatic blowouts—and, when the girls are no longer speaking, a chance meeting years later that shows how starkly New York has changed them both. It’s unclear whether their relationship will ever restart. Silver has written a fun read with lots of snarky humor (Sylvie worries about becoming trapped in a “gray crust of sexlessness”; the girls talk about former classmates: “And anyway, she’s the heiress to the coffee-cake fortune! She could afford to keep the baby”). Although she successfully captures a postgrad subculture, Silver maintains too much narrative distance from her characters. She comments on Cassandra’s and Sylvie’s superficial foibles but never plumbs their full emotional depths; in a relationship-based novel, this may leave readers dissatisfied.
A caustically witty novel but one that rarely interrupts its superficiality to deliver a deeper meaning.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53896-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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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