A sensual novel about a painter, sparkling with mythological details.
In this debut romantic fantasy, a widow tries to choose between a family man and a globe-trotting teacher, unaware that an ancient predator stalks her.
Painter Tess Morgan lost her husband, Meyer, in a car accident five months ago. She and her 5-year-old daughter, Abby, live in the hauntingly wooded town of Carlisle, in Ontario, Canada. One day, while meeting with Abby’s kindergarten teacher, Tess waits for her friend Thomas, another single parent. Instead, she runs into Carlisle newcomer Bryce Waters, who’s there to meet his niece. Later, in a cafe, Tess experiences a vision of a woman being ravished by a tattooed man with needlelike teeth. The woman, Tess learns, is a local named Sonia MacKinnen who’s been missing for days. That she was recently seen with Bryce doesn’t stop Tess from going to a Halloween party at his lavish estate. She attends dressed as Tuatha Dé Danaan, an Irish fairy, and is smitten when Bryce, a traveling anthropology teacher, can converse about the mythological beings that she paints. Unsurprisingly, when Thomas and Bryce meet at a kindergarten Christmas pageant, they instantly dislike each other. Their competition for Tess sets off an avalanche of revealed secrets that tie the artist to the ancient people of Lemuria—and to the horrifying man from her vision. With a generous wit that readers should savor, Willson presents Tess as a damaged woman desperate to heal. She describes Tess’ childhood with a bipolar mother as “an endless roller coaster of maxed-out credit card highs and Titanic-worthy lows.” The author also spreads her love and knowledge of ancient civilizations on nearly every page. As Thomas and Bryce argue the merits of believing in Atlantis, readers learn that “Troy was myth until 1871, when a German archaeologist discovered it under layers of mountains in Turkey.” The narrative also tackles reincarnation, asking if whether, before humans appeared, souls existed in dinosaurs. In the final third, the point of view changes, somewhat telegraphing where characters might stand in the end. Yet as Willson unfurls more of her world, her series’ immense potential proves irresistible.
A sensual novel about a painter, sparkling with mythological details.Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-925296-16-7
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Driven
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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