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SOULS RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Name: SOULS RAISED FROM THE DEAD
Author: Doris Betts
ISBN: 0-679-42621-3

by Doris Betts ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1994

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The first novel by Betts (Heading West, 1981) in over ten years indulges in the clichÇs of domestic melodrama—a divorced couple, the illness of their only child, the burden and joy of non- nuclear families—but it's all done in an inviting Southern voice. Unfortunately, Betts has long been outclassed by those who followed her earlier example: Lee Smith, Marianne Gingher, and Kaye Gibbons, to name a few. Mary Thompson, the clever and sharp-witted daughter of a highway patrolman in North Carolina, is the latest in a long line of spunky fictional Southern girls. Full of yearning for the mother who ran off when she was ten, Mary develops an obsession with horses. Her stoical dad, Frank, has no idea how to raise a girl but is full of good intentions. When Mary is diagnosed with chronic renal failure, Frank's life also takes a turn for the worse. He can't commit to either of the women in his life—a local journalist or Mary's riding instructor—and finds matters further complicated by the return of his ex, a vain beauty whose selfishness has tragic consequences and whose entire family is considered trashy by Frank's supportive, devout mother and his sarcastic father. Dialysis stunts Mary's development into womanhood and makes her an impatient candidate for a transplant. While her grandparents bury all their long-nurtured grudges, her mother—the ideal donor- -disappears with her new, young husband. The teary denouement comes after a blow-by-blow narrative of Mary's illness. In her effort to survey the range of human reactions to the suffering of others, Betts relies on too many pointless subplots that just wander into oblivion and fantasy. She also suffers from a penchant for puns and one-liners, putting words in her protagonists mouths that are inappropriately out of character. Still, guaranteed to exercise the tear ducts.

Pub Date: April 8, 1994

ISBN: 0-679-42621-3

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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

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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.