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THE LONG ROOM

Name: THE LONG ROOM
Author: Francesca Kay
ISBN: 978-941040-45-4

by Francesca Kay ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2016

Kay is consistently entertaining in this subtle, sad psychological thriller.

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Here is le Carré writ small yet still tense in a quiet thriller set amid the less glamorous work of back-office surveillance for the British government.

It’s two weeks before Christmas 1981 in London, and Stephen Donaldson—28, single, and Oxford-educated— is headed for a crisis. He works for the government’s Institute, which bugs people of questionable politics—Reds, revolutionaries, Irish Republican Army operatives. He listens to the recordings and makes note of anything significant. Nothing much is: his “caseload seldom offers the possibility of drama.” That changes when his superior tells him a top-secret case code-named Phoenix may involve disloyalty by an Institute insider, but the case also may be closed if nothing of substance emerges soon. This threat furnishes another sort of drama, for Stephen has become infatuated with Helen, part of the Phoenix equation, merely by listening to her on a daily basis. In his desperation to maintain the connection with her, he begins fudging reports and breaking Institute rules. Will he be caught? Will he bag Phoenix? And who is the friendly, foreign-accented Alberic, met in a pub proscribed by the Institute? Kay (The Translation of the Bones, 2012, etc.) uses fine observation to create the mind of a desperate, faceless bureaucrat in a tedious job. Stephen's past life emerges through his own and his mother’s memories. Perhaps his love for Helen is rooted somehow in the lost twin sister who died shortly after birth or in being raised by a woman alone after his father abandoned them in Stephen’s childhood. His fantasy of love exists at Mitty-esque extremes ranging from chivalry to the heartthrob treacle James Joyce mocked in the character of Gerty MacDowell. Yet Helen brings meaning to a life-eroding job, and like the femme fatale Stephen will never encounter, she represents a danger he cannot help flirting with.

Kay is consistently entertaining in this subtle, sad psychological thriller.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-941040-45-4

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Tin House

Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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

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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.