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THE STEPMAN

Name: THE STEPMAN
Author: David Margolis
ISBN: 1-877946-76-1

by David Margolis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1996

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First novel about a man who flees a floundering marriage in search of his past. Abner Minsky drifts into San Francisco during the later days of flower power and, after going through a number of girlfriends, falls in love with a painfully indecisive woman, Lora. Abner fancies himself a poet who, like the Beats he admires, sees all the world reflected in ordinary things. When he's admitted to graduate school in Upstate New York, Lora and her two children reluctantly follow him. The couple then have a child of their own and settle into an impoverished, artistic, but more or less middle-class existence, with the gentle Abner trying hard to be a good stepdad. After ten years, though, the marriage has turned into the bleakly ordinary, with Abner at last aware that being a poet in American doesn't pay much, and facing the realization that he also isn't much of a poet. Meanwhile, Lora has become a committed feminist, so that she's continually railing at Abner for being uncaring, a chauvinist, etc. Confused, angry, he goes back to California, where he does some hard physical work and reconnects with old friends now living in a commune and trying (more or less) to remain true to their hippie ways. Before long, Abner makes a pass at someone else's old lady and gets tossed from the commune. Driving back to New York and Lora, Abner, somewhat the wiser, reflects ruefully that he's a ``man whose personality is so cemented in its place that change is impossible. Consider that there may be no happy ending.'' Indeed. Enough time has passed that Margolis's portrait of flower power San Francisco is entertaining, and he writes lyrically about ordinary love, capturing the way relationships can be eaten up by pettiness. But Abner's odyssey is rendered here in a fashion so exceedingly mundane that many readers will find themselves unmoved by Abner and Lora's woes.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996

ISBN: 1-877946-76-1

Page Count: 175

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
TALES OF UNKOSHER SOULS
by David Margolis

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MISADVENTURES OF BUDDY JONES
by David Margolis

- BOOK REVIEW
The Billion-Dollar Creative
by David Margolis

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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...

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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

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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.

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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.