A valuable read for those who love poetry and self-help books—and those looking for answers in a world darkened by the...
Much like life, love is not a destination; by using poetry to depict the stages of the relationship cycle, Bayer writes her way to the answers along that journey.
At one time or another, we all experience love and the loss of love. How smooth our journey is on this route depends on the circumstances of the fall and whether or not the journey allows us find love again. By equal measures, Bayer has felt love and been devastated by its loss. Along the way she suffered greatly, left alone in the wilderness of her heart. Turning to her muse and confessional poetry as her vehicle, she pieced back together the idea of love from the ashes of confusion and sadness. Bayer, who is a doctoral candidate in health psychology and a blogger, may be in tune with these emotions more deeply than the average traveler. However, it is the format of her collection and the delivery of her words that makes her work so engaging. The book is separated into chapters that function as milestones in her journey. “Falling” begins a descent into the chaotic levels of heartache unknown. “Searching” explores memories and feelings, trying to make sense of what has happened. “Accepting” goes beyond coming to terms with fate, delving into self-acceptance. “Knowing” is really the first baby steps on the other slope of the relationship parabola. “Loving” is fairly self-explanatory, but framed in elegant, fully realized words. “Having” and “Understanding” add the final pieces to the puzzle. All the while, Bayer’s well-written, matter of fact style of dealing out verses and overcoming emotions pour onto the page. This helps to heal the wounded and bring solace to the reader who is ready to find it.
A valuable read for those who love poetry and self-help books—and those looking for answers in a world darkened by the absence of love.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1449927912
Page Count: 171
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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