Well-meaning but wooden drama from Hill (An Ordinary Woman, 2002, etc.).
Toxic memories, mental illness, painful recovery.
Rayne Holland is a “wonderful, caring person with a brilliant filmmaking career ahead of her.” Her emotionally wrenching documentary on incest victims garnered stellar reviews and important awards. Her marriage to handsome Paul has some problems—more on that later—but she loves her five-year-old daughter Desiree and her life in Savannah, Georgia, among the African-American intellectual elite. Lately, though, Rayne has been moody, troubled by nameless fears and a strange distractedness. And she’s not interested in sex, to Paul’s dismay. After she alone survives the car crash that kills her husband and daughter, she tries to kill herself and winds up in a mental institution. Suicidal, mute with shock, emotionally withdrawn—well, maybe she can recover in this safe haven, paid for by a seemingly limitless insurance plan. There is no shouting in this distinctly unreal haven, no lunatics running about in tattered gowns—in fact, none of that crazy-folks mess anywhere. Decorous patients stroll the beautifully landscaped paths, accompanied by kindly doctors. But why, asks her lifelong friend Gayle, won’t she speak? These things take time, replies Pauline Dennis, a compassionate psychologist right out of decades of TV dramas written for women, as she smoothes her immaculately starched white smock, musing silently on the powerful connection she feels to her new patient. Her interviews with Rayne’s family begin to uncover various secrets. There is Seething Resentment over Paul’s clandestine affair with Gayle, and Deep-Seated Guilt over her mother’s early death. There’s even Emotional Neglect and an Indifferent Father—but Dr. Dennis has a feeling there’s Something More. And a Terrible Secret comes to light: Rayne is an incest victim herself, sexually assaulted by her uncle. Will she ever find closure and heal the wounds of the past?
Well-meaning but wooden drama from Hill (An Ordinary Woman, 2002, etc.).Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-28193-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
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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