by Donald Braun ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 8, 2015
A protracted parable about finding your true nature while on the road to strange places.
A debut novel offers a nestled allegory about a soul-awakening journey.
In this tale, a man named Jack Burchell is living in the bleakly regimented world of 2059, a world still reeling from the wars of the 2040s that “changed everything and set the earth on a new trajectory.” Burchell works facelessly for a multinational corporation. One day he defies his supervisors and visits his personal storage space, where he finds an old book that turns out to be his grandfather’s secret memoir, an account of a long walking adventure his grandfather and a friend named Khalid took, forsaking the horror-haunted land of Ennuied. In Ennuied, all life is organized around a plant called “fodder grass” (in a typically philosophical digression, Burchell's grandfather thinks, “I suppose all people have something like fodder grass, those most important things they grew up with and were told will meet their needs”). Ennuied is a dark, repressive, spider-haunted place, and Khalid and Burchell’s grandfather leave it without much compunction, heading into a broader world in which beautiful music wafts through the forests and time seems to lose its value. They encounter a variety of people and places in the course of their journeys, and the sentiment of one of the folks they meet, “we all know that we simply need to follow our heart,” becomes the theme running through their adventures. In clear and energetic prose, Braun poses one thinly veiled allegory after another about the various kinds of places seekers tend to find. The two friends meet many different types of fellow travelers on the road, and they reach a variety of lands and cities, from regimented Officium to solipsistic Heureux, each as stylized and dramatic as Ennueid. All of this—as well as the increasingly enigmatic companionship of Khalid—provokes in Burchell a series of reassessments of his life and preoccupations. Any reader who’s ever gone backpacking without a plan will likely nod at many of the realizations Braun describes in these pages.
A protracted parable about finding your true nature while on the road to strange places.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7239-8
Page Count: 270
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Nora Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 1995
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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