Dorsey's (The Force, 1994) fiction debut is a slick fable about the increasingly high cost of realizing the American dream. One typically hectic day, Rich Cahill (an overworked, underpaid account executive at a midsized ad agency in Rochester, New York) and his 12-year old son Alec are caught up in a holdup at their local McDonald's. While Rich (who's relieved of his wallet in the confusion) gets a good look at the all-black crew of bandits, he's curiously reluctant to cooperate with the police. A county cop nonetheless nabs one of the gang, a teenage athlete named Will Breedlove. The cop prevails on Rich to cooperate in an informal rehabilitation project that has Will tutoring an enthusiastic Alec on the finer points of basketball. Before long, Rich is being financially enticed by Eugene Price, the man who staged the fast- food robbery as a rite of passage for young hoods eager to work for his upstate drug dealership. At the same time, he's under round- the-clock pressure on a job that has yet to earn him rewards commensurate with his efforts. Nor is his crowded home a refuge for him (he's the product of a dysfunctional family from the wrong side of the tracks). Indeed, after ferrying their two kids about, he and Meg, his art-gallery-owner wife, scarcely have a moment for each other. Rich agrees to run a one-shot errand for Price, which nets him money enough to build his dream house in a tonier neighborhood. At the close, a confident and independent Rich is considering an offer from the savvy Price (now completely out of the narcotics trade) to join him in a legitimate, lucrative venture involving ethnic radio stations. A well-told tale that works both as a suspenseful and cautionary take on unfamiliar forms of white-collar crime and as an absorbing account of the suburban life and its discontents. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-87471-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
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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