Okay for anyone who can’t get enough of camels-and-couscous epics—but readers who loved the heated sensuality and intrigue...
Last seen amidst the bloodthirsty Aztecs (Feathered Serpent, 2002), Falconer checks into a Turkish harem.
Looking for a sensual tale of debauched sultans and languorous odalisques who scheme, sulk, and smoke dope? Then skip this version. Süleyman the Magnificent can’t even have sex without obsessing over international relations, circa 1550, his role as a statesman, and why it all seems so empty. As the naked, voluptuous, perfumed royal favorite Gülbehar displays her vermilion-painted pubis for his delectation, Süleyman realizes that it’s only her familiarity that he loves. “Perhaps this protocol that I hate has molded me into its creature after all,” thinks he. “I love order and repetition too much.” As time goes by, unfortunately for Gülbehar, Süleyman also realizes that he loves the fair Hürrem, a gorgeous Tartar interloper who wants to be his one and only. But palace politics come first in this half-hearted romance as assorted viziers, eunuchs, and power-hungry sons with glittering eyes skulk about and complain in overwrought dialogue (through thin, cruel lips) straight out of a bad silent movie.
Okay for anyone who can’t get enough of camels-and-couscous epics—but readers who loved the heated sensuality and intrigue of Barbara Chase-Riboud’s much more polished Valide or even Bertrice Small’s fabulously trashy The Khadin are not likely to be wowed.Pub Date: July 13, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61030-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
A super-exorcism that leaves the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth and what a bad taste it is. King presents us with the riddle of a small Maine town that has been deserted overnight. Where did all the down-Easters go? Matter of fact, they're still there but they only get up at sundown. . . for a warm drink. . . .Ben Mears, a novelist, returns to Salem's Lot (pop. 1319), the hometown he hasn't seen since he was four years old, where he falls for a young painter who admires his books (what happens to her shouldn't happen to a Martian). Odd things are manifested. Someone rents the ghastly old Marsten mansion, closed since a horrible double murder-suicide in 1939; a dog is found impaled on a spiked fence; a healthy boy dies of anemia in one week and his brother vanishes. Ben displays tremendous calm considering that you're left to face a corpse that sits up after an autopsy and sinks its fangs into the coroner's neck. . . . Vampirism, necrophilia, et dreadful alia rather overplayed by the author of Carrie (1974).
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1975
ISBN: 0385007515
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Here, after last year's Of Love and Shadows, the tale of a quirky young woman's rise to influence in an unnamed South American country—with a delightful cast of exotic characters, but without the sure-handed plotting and leisurely grace of Allende's first—and best—book, The House of the Spirits (1985). When little Eva Luna's mother dies, the imaginative child is hired out to a string of eccentric families. During one of her periodic bouts of rebellion, she runs away and makes friends with Huberto Naranjo, a slick little street-kid. Years later, when she's in another bind, he finds her a place to stay in the red-light district—with a cheerful madame, La Senora, whose best friend is Melesio, a transvestite cabaret star. Everything's cozy until a new police sergeant takes over the district and disrupts the accepted system of corruption. Melesio drafts a protesting petition and is packed off to prison, and Eva's out on the street. She meets Riad Halabi, a kind Arab merchant with a cleft lip, who takes pity on her and whisks her away to the backwater village of Agua Santa. There, Eva keeps her savior's sulky wife Zulema company. Zulema commits suicide after a failed extramarital romance, and the previously loyal visitors begin to whisper about the relationship between Riad Halabi and Eva. So Eva departs for the capital—where she meets up with Melesio (now known as Mimi), begins an affair with Huberto Naranjo (now a famous rebel leader), and becomes casually involved in the revolutionary movement. Brimming with hothouse color, amply displayed in Allende's mellifluous prose, but the riot of character and incident here is surface effect; and the action—the mishaps of Eva—is toothless and vague. Lively entertainment, then, with little resonance.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1988
ISBN: 0241951658
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1988
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