Dickens needn’t fear the competition, but a Very Barry Christmas should prove a holiday favorite for years to come.
A nostalgic Christmas fable strikes an engaging balance between humor and heart.
With his penchant for booger jokes and infatuation with 1960s rock-’n’-roll, the Pulitzer Prize–winning former columnist and prolific author (Dave Barry’s Money Secrets, 2006, etc.) has proven inordinately successful at channeling his inner 13-year-old. This short, easily digestible, first-person reminiscence invites the reader to identify its fictional narrator, a junior-high student, with the author. Not only do they share the same initials, but Doug Barnes lives in the place and era of Barry’s adolescence—Asquont, N.Y., 1960. Christmas in this commuter town 30 miles north of New York City has some amusing traditions, including a “Manger War,” in which Catholic and Protestant kids play pranks involving each other’s displays, and a Christmas Eve pageant that suffers a series of calamities. After the previous year’s mishap, in which the vase intended as a gift for baby Jesus shattered and he was instead presented with a Rolodex, Doug finds himself demoted from Wise Man to shepherd. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, since it’s fun carrying a staff, if this year Judy Flanders hadn’t been selected to play Mary. Judy is the girl of Doug’s dreams, one of the most popular, and nicest, girls in school, and one of the few who’ll both talk to and dance with Doug. (This doesn’t make him special; she’s like that with everyone.) Pivotal plot developments include the accumulation of bat poop in the belfry of Doug’s church and the Christmas Eve death of the Barnes family’s beloved dog (who was older than Doug) and their unexpected adoption of a new one. Walter the Christmas miracle dog becomes Doug’s guardian angel, Doug becomes Judy’s hero and the holiday ends happily for everyone.
Dickens needn’t fear the competition, but a Very Barry Christmas should prove a holiday favorite for years to come.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-15413-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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