The Russian angle doesn’t quite work, but there are still enough agreeably romantic adventures and high living in town and...
Veteran chronicler of country-house misdeeds (The Dark Side of the Sun, 2000, etc.) spices her latest story of adulterous gentry with a Russian princess who buys her way into English society using stolen emeralds as the Bolsheviks take control of her native land.
Set after 1917, when Europe is recovering from one war and fearing an expansion of the Bolshevik revolution, matriarch Augusta Langham has only one objective: She wants son Bertie to marry well, and soon. Augusta is one of those implacable forces that are hard to resist, and Bertie doesn’t really try. She orders him to marry Mai, a wealthy young neighbor and heiress Augusta has picked out for him. But Mai is a Suffragette, and that’s too much for Augusta, who prefers someone more tractable. A new bride is needed, which is just the role beautiful Russian Princess Zhenia has been looking for. Newly arrived in England with her stash of emeralds and other expensive goodies stolen from a fellow Russian émigré in Paris, she is currently living with the aging Countess Olga, to whom she claims to be related. Zhenia is actually a scheming former ballet dancer determined to survive, whatever it takes. Impressed by the emeralds, Augusta engineers a marriage between Zhenia and Bertie, while Mai marries neighbor Ned, a handsome young man whose only passion is his butterfly collection. As Zhenia makes sure she gets what she wants, even if it means committing adultery to produce an heir, Mai has twins. Then, as Ned becomes increasingly abusive, she flees with the children to London, where she falls in love with Nicolai, a Russian émigré. But neither Zhenia nor Mai can quite escape her past—as the Russian secret police track the stolen diamonds, and Ned, determined to get them back, pursues Mai and his children.
The Russian angle doesn’t quite work, but there are still enough agreeably romantic adventures and high living in town and country to entertain.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32539-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
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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