Intelligence, wit and an engaging heroine can’t quite disguise the fact that there’s not much actually happening here.
Versatile novelist/essayist/biographer Prose (Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, 2009, etc.) views post-9/11 America through the sardonic eyes of an Albanian immigrant.
An ad on Craigslist led Lula to a cushy live-in job in suburban New Jersey keeping an eye on high-school senior Zeke while his father makes a bundle on Wall Street. And Mister Stanley, as Lula calls him, even got his friend, hotshot immigration lawyer Don Settebello, to arrange a work visa. So it’s a bit awkward in October 2005 when three fellow Albanians show up in a Lexus SUV and ask her to hide a gun for them. Why does Lula do it? Truth is, she’s a bit bored by her “new American life,” as Don keeps calling it. Making sure Zeke eats, sleeps and does his homework doesn’t take much time; conning Mister Stanley and Don with stories about blood feuds and bride-kidnapping in Albania (most of them plagiarized from folklore or based on family incidents from 100 years ago) is almost too easy. Besides, Alvo, chief of the Lexus-driving crew, is awfully cute, and Lula is lonely. She knows so much more than these liberal, well-meaning Americans; when Don agonizes over what he’s seen at Guantánamo and how little he can do for his clients there, she shrugs, “very Balkan…that’s what happens…human nature.” Lula’s observations of the affluent U.S. are funny, but Prose’s targets are rather obvious: Mister Stanley’s estranged wife is a loony New Ager making a tour of Native American spiritual sites; indifferent student Zeke gets into college only because the place that accepts him is desperate for applicants after a shooting incident (“it’s always the science students,” remarks a professor), etc. The story is agreeable without being terribly eventful or making much of an impact, emotional or otherwise.
Intelligence, wit and an engaging heroine can’t quite disguise the fact that there’s not much actually happening here.Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-171376-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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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