A colorful tale about colorful characters in colorful places and times. Vintage McCullough.
Back in her native Australia after her notable chronicles of the ancient Romans, McCullough depicts a brilliant man who has the golden touch in everything but his marriage.
In a big sweep that covers much of the globe during the late 1800s, McCullough (The October Horse, 2002, etc.) introduces Alexander Kinross and the woman, Elizabeth, he sends for and marries. A man who never knew his father, Alexander leaves Scotland as a teenager in the mid-1800s determined to prove the local bigots wrong about his abilities. He moves to England and studies engineering, then goes on to California, where, with his nose for gold, he makes a bundle in the Gold Rush. Next is Australia, where he discovers more gold and establishes Kinross, a model town. Now immensely rich, and the owner of a magnificent house, he sends for Elizabeth, last seen as a child in Scotland, to be his bride. At 16, Elizabeth is too frightened of her dour skinflint of a father to disobey his orders to leave for Australia, but from the moment she meets Alexander, she’s repelled. Nearly losing her life in the process, she bears him two daughters, brilliant Nell and brain-damaged Anna. Told that Elizabeth should not have more children, Alexander spends more time with Ruby, his mistress, the woman he really loves. Paradoxically, Ruby, a former madam and the mother of brilliant half-Chinese Lee, becomes Elizabeth’s best friend and helps her deal with adolescent Anna’s rape, the murder of Anna’s rapist by her Chinese nurse, and the birth of Anna’s child. Though Alexander becomes an international tycoon, Elizabeth remains unimpressed. Only Lee, a few years younger than she and back from studying in England, touches her heart. But Elizabeth still has much to endure before Alexander, a fundamentally generous man, realizes the unwitting harm he has done to her and makes spectacular, if tragic, amends.
A colorful tale about colorful characters in colorful places and times. Vintage McCullough.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-684-85330-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
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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