Still, as with other instructional novels, this odd hybrid is likely to annoy as many as it entertains.
The sort of thing you might expect from MIT: a computer science professor’s attempt to turn his specialty into fiction.
Papadimitriou (Computer Science/Berkeley) sets his story in the near future and tells it in the present tense. It features three main human characters and one nonhuman. Ethel is the inventor of the relevance engine Exegesis, a program that determines what value objects turned up by a Web search have to the individual user. Alexandros is a Greek archaeologist working with a computerlike artifact recovered from a ship that sank some two thousand years earlier. And Ian is an outlaw programmer, a charismatic hacker with whom Ethel takes up residence after the affair with Alexandros that opens the story. The nonhuman character is Turing, an advanced interactive program (named for Alan Turing, a pioneer of computing) that comes to Alexandros’ screen to instruct him (and occasionally his teenaged daughter) in the history and philosophical implications of computer science. The effect of all this depends largely on what the reader comes looking for. Judged as fiction, Turing is distinctly short on plot and not much fuller in its people. On a visit to a Greek island, Ethel falls in love with Alexandros, gets pregnant, leaves him, visits an advanced virtual-reality scenario where she meets Ian, falls in love with him, then he comes to join her in America . . . and so on. Papadimitriou seems only vaguely interested in the effect of these events on the characters; in fact, the narrative is most alive when Turing is online with Alexandros, feeding him computer science, math, and philosophy in a breezy, not entirely reverent tone. The final thirty-odd pages are comments—often quite funny—on the text by readers of an imaginary newsgroup.
Still, as with other instructional novels, this odd hybrid is likely to annoy as many as it entertains.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-262-16218-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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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