The author continues his streak of engrossing medical tales with this winner.
This thriller proves that the cure can be more dangerous than the disease.
The soul of this latest medical tale by Bollinger (Satan Shoal, 2016, etc.) is Eric Carter. Eric heads the North Carolina–based lab for Tera Pharmagenics and is creating Fluzenta, the first universal flu vaccine. Eric has sacrificed much in Tera’s decadelong effort to bring Fluzenta to market. His wife, Kate, divorced him, marrying a local real estate agent. In addition, Eric doesn’t spend nearly enough time with his 8-year-old daughter, Ali. But it’s all about to pay off for Eric when the Food and Drug Administration approves Fluzenta. Only the FDA doesn’t. That’s when Eric’s orderly world collapses. The moral compass of Tera, Eric makes plans to appeal the FDA decision while trying to find an alternative use for the research that might keep the company afloat. Unfortunately, Frank Liles, Tera’s CEO, is feeling really pressured because he borrowed money from the wrong kind of investor. So, behind Eric’s back, Frank and Nicole Peters, one of the company’s senior research scientists, concoct an unscrupulous plan to create a demand for Fluzenta. The resulting epidemic gets Fluzenta quickly approved, but then deadly side effects appear. So Eric and Wally Moore, another senior scientist, race to find a cure for this new strain before more people die, including the protagonist’s beloved aunt. In this fast-paced tale, Bollinger does an admirable job highlighting how big pharma and the government often clash. Drug companies spend years and millions of dollars developing new medicine, seeking to meet stiff FDA regulations to protect the public. But in the end, it’s the sick who end up paying top dollar for those drugs that do get approved. In addition, the author skillfully focuses on Eric’s life inside and outside the office; the hero is a well-meaning man who finds himself wrestling with a life-threatening outbreak. Eric tries to maintain the semblance of a normal life, working to preserve his relationship with Ali and a bicoastal romance with Rae Thornton, another Tera executive. So it’s understandable that Nicole and Frank were able to pull off their scheme under his nose. Still, the appealing protagonist keeps struggling to find a way for his hard work and tough choices to benefit humanity.
The author continues his streak of engrossing medical tales with this winner.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9989975-0-6
Page Count: 364
Publisher: JNB Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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