Reads, overall, like a rehash—however amusing—of Borrowed. Giffin’s next had better be Something New.
Airhead antagonist gets her own novel in Giffin’s follow-up to Something Borrowed (2004).
Previously, Rachel took center stage, but the point of view shifts here to Darcy, who catches her fiancé, Dexter, hiding in the closet of Rachel’s Manhattan studio. Dex has just dumped Darcy mere days before their wedding, and Darcy expected sympathy, not betrayal, from maid-of-honor Rachel (see Carrington, above). Darcy and Rachel have been symbiotic friends since grade school, even moving together from Indiana to New York, Rachel to attend NYU Law and then work for a blue chip firm, Darcy to work in P.R. In the gal-pals’ lifelong competition, Darcy, the prettier and less ethical, has always trounced the allegedly smarter Rachel. (Rachel even turned 30 first.) Darcy had strayed from her own engagement, going off with Dex’s groomsman Marcus, by whom, she learns, she’s pregnant. Darcy and Marcus attempt a relationship—with disastrous results. Her superficial P.R. colleague Claire deserts her as glitz-spoiling single motherhood looms, and Darcy ends up in London, bunking with another grade-school chum, Ethan, now a novelist and architectural writer. Rachel’s previous visit with Ethan is grist for more Borrowed backstory: Ethan confesses to Darcy that Rachel and Dex were an item long before the closet confrontation. Ethan, impatient with Darcy’s vanity and indifference to prenatal care, scolds her, whereupon she sets out to reform her shallow goals. But things still come too easily to her, and consequently she experiences little meaningful struggle or other interesting conflict. Almost immediately upon arrival in London, she meets all new girlfriends and attracts a caring, rich and handsome doctor. Ethan warms to her when she reveals she’s carrying twins, and the two rapidly—too rapidly—learn the real meaning of love and friendship. Unfortunately, Darcy doesn’t succeed either in shedding her stereotype as shopaholic sybarite or in sustaining a novel of her own.
Reads, overall, like a rehash—however amusing—of Borrowed. Giffin’s next had better be Something New.Pub Date: June 14, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-32385-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
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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