This jaunty, big-hearted novel is chick lit with a Y-chromosome.
Romantic comedy with a charming British accent.
Professionally, the best thing Stephen C. McQueen has going for him is his famous-sounding name. His résumé suggests that, whatever the well-known theater adage might say, there are small roles—a seemingly endless supply of them, in fact. Stephen has turned in purposefully forgettable performances as “Rent Boy 2” and “Dead Young Man,” and he has dressed up as a giant singing squirrel for the sake of his art. His latest gig isn’t even acting; it’s being prepared to act, should the need arise. He’s playing understudy to budding transatlantic film star and ascendant heartthrob Josh Harper in a West End show. Gorgeous, charismatic and spectacularly uncomplicated, Josh is everything Stephen isn’t, but Stephen is able to keep his envy at controllable levels until he meets Josh’s wife. Nora is as real as Josh is superficial, and she’s got a dry wit and a voluptuous bod, too. Stephen falls in love with her more or less immediately, so the friendship that develops between the two is as torturous as it is satisfying. When Stephen stumbles upon a shameful secret in Josh’s personal life, he is torn between his loyalty to Nora and the opportunity to finally make his name as an actor. There’s plenty of material for screwball hilarity here, and Nicholls (A Question of Attraction, 2004) truly makes the most of it. His prose is laugh-out-loud funny, and he’s equally adept at handling complex emotional issues. In the rigidly orthodox realm of romance, breaking up a marriage is a risky move, but Nicholls pulls it off without creating any cartoonish villains or letting his characters off the hook for questionable behavior. The ending he contrives should please the sentimentalist and the moralist both.
This jaunty, big-hearted novel is chick lit with a Y-chromosome.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6182-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
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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