Clever, original, and unabashedly silly fun.
A disturbingly ambitious woman finds herself challenged by mysterious crises—both personal and professional—in Cohen’s painfully funny satire of the tech industry.
In Shelley Stone, Cohen has created an aggressively unlikable yet captivating and entertaining heroine. Twenty years ago, as a directionless 20-year-old, Shelley was struck by lightning, a trauma for which she claims to be grateful despite the physical pain it inflicted. She doesn’t care that the lightning shriveled her pleasure receptor or that she now scores low on the likability scale. What matters is that the lightning strike changed her brain in ways that made her into the driven woman she’s become. Shelley is married and has two children—readers will concur with her amazement at having attracted financial-analyst husband Rafe, who goes along with her scheduled 12 minutes of daily sex even though his own pleasure principle remains intact—but she's primarily committed to her role as CEO of Conch, a company producing personal data repositories shaped like shells and worn behind users’ ears. On a family vacation in France, Shelley’s 4-year-old daughter, Nova, disappears while Shelley and Rafe are distracted by work calls; more disturbing, both parents continue their calls while searching for her. Fortunately, a stranger finds Nova, a stranger who somehow has Shelley’s cellphone number and seems oddly excited to meet her when returning the child. Within weeks, Shelley meets another stranger: Michelle looks like a younger version of Shelley herself, down to the same scar on her arm, and has experienced the same childhood. Is a pre-lightning strike, alternate self possible? Or is Shelley having a nervous breakdown? Shelley is rattled but cynical enough to have her doubts. Meanwhile Conch suddenly faces serious quality control issues that she must solve to save her job. And then there’s Rafe’s plan to move with the kids to Brazil, with or without Shelley.
Clever, original, and unabashedly silly fun.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54278-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
PROFILES
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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