Hardly groundbreaking, but a beach tote couldn’t ask for more.
Another female-empowering, feel-good novel from Cook, who in this seventh outing (The Wildwater Walking Club, 2009, etc.) cautions against the return of the bad husband.
Jill gets by, but just barely. Seven years ago, her husband Seth left for Africa and the Peace Corps with little more than a goodbye note, leaving Jill and their three-year-old daughter Anastasia destitute. Slowly Jill has built a modest life for herself—she owns a house (luckily the questionable neighborhood has become safely gentrified) and has a few jobs that pay the bills: offering weekly lessons in international cuisine at the community center; as a call operator at Great Girlfriend Getaways; and the occasional consulting gig in international relations. Jill is smart, but working herself up from the nothing that Seth left her with has taken its toll. Just as the present is beginning to seem pretty good, Seth returns. After seven years without a call or letter, let alone child support, Seth is hoping Jill and Anastasia will forgive him. Anastasia is thrilled to have a daddy and the gifts are great; Jill is seething. Everything becomes quickly complicated: Seth and Anastasia are developing a wonderful relationship; Seth wants to return to their marriage; then Jill and Seth sleep together, and, really, it wasn’t so bad. Jill wonders if she shouldn’t just forgive Seth and allow the three of them to move on. But then there’s Billy, a client of Jill’s who is smart and funny and grown up in ways Seth never was. What’s a gal to do? Go to Costa Rica on a Girlfriend Getaway and hope a little yoga, belly dancing and girl time will sort it all out. Cook hits her marks—exploring the role of single women as they try to navigate work and family—all with good-natured humor and a little examination of what it means to be independent (it’s not all fun).
Hardly groundbreaking, but a beach tote couldn’t ask for more.Pub Date: June 8, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4013-4116-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Strebor/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
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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