The title echoes JFK's Why England Slept, but Leavitt's third novel (A Place I've Never Been, 1990; Equal Affections, 1989) is not primarily political: he uses the Spanish Civil War as a backdrop for his love story of two gay Englishmen. London, 1936. Recent Cambridge graduate Brian Botsford runs with an upper-class, left-wing crowd while he labors over his first novel and lives on checks from his Lady Bracknell-ish Aunt Constance (both his parents are dead). At an Aid to Spain meeting, he cruises subway ticket collector Edward Phelan and is soon enjoying the ``raw sexual display'' of this working-class youth, meeting his family and inviting Edward to share his simple bed- sitter. Brian is a fickle hedonist; he abandons his idea of leaving for Spain to fight the Fascists for this romance across the class divide, but then leaves his loyal partner home with The Communist Manifesto while he parties with the smart set and begins an affair with the worldly-wise Philippa, under the delusion that his homosexuality is a youthful phase before marriage and children. The turning point comes when Philippa, knowing Brian better than he knows himself, rejects his proposal; Edward, meanwhile, has read Brian's tell-all journal and left for Spain in shock. Racked by guilt, Brian at last leaves for Spain himself, to rescue Edward from the international brigade; Edward has turned pacifist and is being tried for desertion. He'll eventually be sprung by one of the judges (another upper-class gay Englishman) but will die of typhoid on the sea voyage back to England with Brian. Leavitt has bravely attempted to extend his range; too bad the result is glib and melodramatic. It's not just the corny plot devices: whether it's politics or class, he has the words but not the tune.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-670-83349-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
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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