A lightweight but feel-good parable for fans of angel-encounter stories.
A short tale about a man whose life is changed by a mysterious encounter at the foot of a mountain.
Joseph, the narrator of this short novella by Johnston and Ben, is sitting atop a mountain when he’s struck by a series of sudden realizations: life is short; the meaning of existence, murky; the universe can often seem unfair (“What was fair about someone living ninety years and having a great life, while someone else died early from childhood cancer?”); and he’s been ignoring all of these concerns too long. He feels a new clarity as he hikes back down the mountain, but alarming physical symptoms quickly overtake him. He’s feeling terrible when he reaches the bottom and encounters a stranger who calmly informs him he’s having a heart attack but also reassures him: “Everything happens for a reason and everything will work out.” His friends and girlfriend rally around him, and although he’s initially depressed, he survives. When he’s recovered enough to return to the mountain, Joseph seeks out the mysterious stranger in hopes of gaining insights he’s sure the man possesses. And he’s not wrong. He meets the same man, and for the remainder of the novella, the stranger teaches him about meditation, reincarnation (“Creation is precise….If you shoot and kill someone, you will be shot and killed”), and the true nature of Christianity. Their eventual parting is calm but final, and Joseph is left to ponder everything he’s learned and come to some fundamental breakthroughs of his own (he realizes that “knowing God and deepening your relationship with Him is all that matters”). The combination of Christianity and Eastern mysticism that Johnston and Ben present here is intriguing though somewhat underdeveloped; Joseph never experiences any serious doubts about the stranger, and the stranger never hints as to why Joseph would be singled out for such an extraordinary visitation. Both Joseph and his mysterious instructor have a tendency to talk in clichés, and despite his assurances to the contrary, Joseph isn’t radically changed by his supernatural experiences. The story’s pace, however, is quick enough to keep many readers’ interest.
A lightweight but feel-good parable for fans of angel-encounter stories.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1491755235
Page Count: 58
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
