An inventive story about the ebb and flow of the artistic process, and of life itself.
Co-authors Bishop and Fuller (Realists, 2013, etc.) draw on decades of experience as playwrights and puppeteers to craft a novel about love and creativity.
Puppeteer Albert Fisher is coming up on the first anniversary of the death of his wife and collaborator, Lainie. He’s set financially and could retire, but a story begins to bloom in his mind that he can’t resist turning into a puppet production. It’s a tale of Sir Galahad’s quest for the Holy Grail, told in this novel as a story within a story. Fisher struggles to create a satisfying narrative and reflects on what his creative choices tell him about himself. He names Galahad’s wife after his daughter, Mara; he adds a young boy, separated from his parents and lost in time, and a court fool named Sammy. He can’t figure out why he has Mara disguise herself as the fool to join Galahad on his quest, and he’s challenged on the point by Jeanette Ward, a costumer he hired to dress the puppets that he’s building. As the fictional and real-life journeys continue, Fisher and Jeanette get emotionally closer. But every step forward brings more questions for Fisher as the quest in his story mirrors events in his life. The authors resist supplying easy answers for their characters, just as Fisher resists doing so for his. They intriguingly mention that Fisher is visible to the audience as he controls his puppets—an unmistakable reference to their own experience writing the novel. The novel ends up as a kind of fun house mirror of puppets controlling puppets, with little sense of who or what is controlling it all. In this respect, it feels a bit like Tom Stoppard’s famous 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It’s both an existential drama and a comedy, in which the reader’s aha moment is the realization that an epiphany isn’t forthcoming. This may bother readers who like everything wrapped up in a neat bow, but others will find it satisfyingly realistic.
An inventive story about the ebb and flow of the artistic process, and of life itself.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997287-0-3
Page Count: 196
Publisher: WordWorkers Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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