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MAHJAR

Name: MAHJAR
Author: Eva Sallis
ISBN: 1-74114-071-4

by Eva Sallis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2005

Altogether, an unusual and never uninteresting literary niche.

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Fifteen elegant tales about the Arab émigré experience in Australia, courtesy of the Down Under continent’s Sallis (The City of Sealions, p. 145).

While the collection tracks an Australian’s immersion in Arab Yemeni culture, the pieces mostly concern the Lebanese community’s often-uneasy fit within Australian society. In three parts, corresponding to groupings of families, Sallis explores the ancient ties to family and culture that unite and haunt these émigrés. In the first story, an allegory for the startling collision between Australian and Arab cultures, a gigantic kangaroo attacks the car of a family on excursion in the Riverland country. Enraged as her husband Amin is battered by the beast, the wife, Zein, gets out and pommels the animal to death with her patent-leather stilettos while shouting, “God is great!” Eventually, and often unfortunately for the preservation of the family as a tightly knit unit, the émigrés begin to adapt to Australian society, as in “Ibtisam Had Four Sons,” about a matriarch, Ibtisam, who can’t quite keep track of all the goings-on of her wildly assimilated children—all they do is deposit news of divorces and ill-begotten pregnancies. In “Music,” the groom’s mother, Zein, rues the marriage of her son to a plain Australian girl whose family eyes the Arabs suspiciously, and yet she finds a redemptive moment watching the “secret, strengthening gift” of love pass between the newlyweds. Several pieces treat a rich local folklore, like “The Jackal,” a chilling dramatization of the saying that a jackal can drag and bury the body of a man. By the third part, Sallis begins introducing political overtones in stories dealing with Iraqis fleeing from American bombings, and Arab stone-throwers being hunted down savagely in Palestine. These latter tales are heavily weighted, though harrowing, and lack the intricate delineation of the earlier ones.

Altogether, an unusual and never uninteresting literary niche.

Pub Date: April 28, 2005

ISBN: 1-74114-071-4

Page Count: 180

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE FIRE
by Eva Sallis

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CITY OF SEALIONS
by Eva Sallis

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.