Profane on its surface, ethical at its core and always fun, this debut marks the arrival of an important comic talent.
Ferguson (host of CBS’s The Late Late Show) takes us on a wild ride in his scintillating debut, a combination caper/morality tale with the barbed comic energy of a Carl Hiaasen novel.
We begin in the author’s native Scotland. Fraser and George are teenaged buddies, fishing in a canal, when George saves Fraser from the local bully. Fast-forward some 20 years. George is a criminal-defense lawyer with a wife (unloved) and a daughter (adored); he has just been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Without telling his family, he splits for London, contemplating suicide. Fraser, more of a reprobate, is a cynical evangelist on Scottish television who cannot keep his hands off the ladies. A sex scandal ends his gig at the same time he’s invited to a convention of Christian broadcasters in the States. The invitation comes from Ferguson’s two other leads, Leon and Saul, offspring of the same mother but different fathers (Sinatra and Peter Lawford, respectively). The well-hung Leon has his father’s great voice; fat, physically repellent Saul has the brains, recognizing Leon as his meal ticket. After escaping the orphanage, they wind up in backwoods Florida, adopted by snake-handling Pentecostalists. Ferguson deftly juggles his three storylines. George, postponing suicide, travels to Paris and falls in love with gorgeous Claudette, the ultimate femme fatale (her six Great Loves have all died); she will help him find his “inner Frenchman.” The hard-drinking, whoring Fraser will be mugged in Miami and have a near-death experience. Leon and Saul will make a bundle in Hollywood (Ferguson looks balefully at its shark-infested waters) before scoring big on the religious circuit. There will be happy endings for everybody except the hateful, manipulative Saul.
Profane on its surface, ethical at its core and always fun, this debut marks the arrival of an important comic talent.Pub Date: April 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-8118-5375-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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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