Death in a closeknit family brings disturbing revelations of infidelities and betrayal as Goudge (Thorns of Truth, 1998, etc.) offers an absorbing and persuasive, if sometimes predictable, take on sibling rivalry. A few days before Dr. Vernon and Lydia Seagrave are to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, Lydia picks up a gun and shoots her husband. And when the police arrive, she provides no explanation for her action. Younger daughters Kitty and Alex live near the family home on the California coast; eldest sister Daphne, a novelist, has to fly in from New York, leaving her husband, Roger, behind to take care of their children. As the three sisters struggle to understand what motive Lydia could possibly have had for killing their father, whom she claims she still loves, they find old rivalries resurfacing. Daphne has always been her mother’s favorite, Kitty has sided with Daphne, and Alex was her father’s pet. Now, she can—t forgive her mother and won—t help Daphne and Kitty as they try to understand Lydia’s uncharacteristic behavior. Their father may have been a pillar of the community, but it seems he led a sordid private life, seducing his wife’s best friend as well as others close to the family and affecting his daughters’ happiness with his arrogant, manipulative conduct. Throughout the investigation and its disclosures, the sisters— lives change in other ways as well: Daphne finds herself falling in love again with Johnny, her high school sweetheart, now an assistant D.A.; single Kitty, wanting to adopt, also falls unexpectedly in love; and now-divorced Alex discovers, as she accepts the truth about her father, that she is ready to resume her marriage. All will be resolved, with, of course, romantic outcomes for all. A sunnier tale of a Daddy Dearest, by a writer who knows how to entertain in a lively and credible way—despite those too neatly programmed happy endings. (Literary Guild super release; Doubleday main selection)
Pub Date: June 21, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88575-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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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