bookshelf

IT’S ALL TRUE

Name: IT’S ALL TRUE
Author: David Freeman
ISBN: 0-7432-4975-5

A NOVEL OF HOLLYWOOD

by David Freeman ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2004

Excellent material and a fine eye don’t always make for a successful novel: this one needs a doctor.

bookshelf

Screenwriter Freeman on the varied and so-so adventures of a screenwriter edging into middle age.

Henry Wearie, in his mid-30s, is quite well known in town and has been for years—he can go channel-surfing and have a good chance of stumbling on a snatch of his own dialogue (usually uncredited). But his most famous script is one he sold for a quarter million years ago yet was never produced, and although Henry is considered quite the competent script doctor or rewrite man, he’s definitely no Robert Towne. With his career stalled, he’s now also recently separated from his wife Madeline, and so when a producer “friend” of his starts squiring him around town, Henry begins thinking that he might be getting some heat. Somewhere along the way, though, Freeman (One of Us, 1997, etc.) lets his story drop off the edge of a cliff, and the reader is treated to a confused muddle of scenes following the ups-and-downs of Henry’s life: these include the way he meets his second wife, the new couple’s botched attempt at adoption, and Henry’s 34th birthday on a decadent film set in Mexico. Taken individually, these mini-booklets are well enough done and have the smart, non-showoffy quality of the true Hollywood insider, but they seem never quite to go anywhere, a feeling not helped by the chronological jumping around. Only in the final pages, when Henry takes his second wife to New York, do its many strands begin to resemble a proper story.

Excellent material and a fine eye don’t always make for a successful novel: this one needs a doctor.

Pub Date: March 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-7432-4975-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ONE OF US
by David Freeman

- BOOK REVIEW
A HOLLYWOOD LIFE
by David Freeman

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

bookshelf

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.