Real-life snowboarder Lenz (Surfing the Himalayas, 1995) takes us, in what may be the most hilarious spiritual quest since Candide, on a most excellent pilgrimage through the mountains of Nepal. Although there is every indication that Lenz has written with a straight face, his sequel—which he dedicates to his dog—reads for all the world like a '90s parody of Gurdjieff or The Razor's Edge. In an introduction, Lenz makes it clear that he is merely fictionalizing his own experiences as a California jock abroad, and anyone who has hung out in Tibetan youth hostels—or simply fantasized over a Lonely Planet guidebook—will recognize the scene. The narrator is a young and not very bright American who comes to the East in search of the perfect mountain to surf and falls under the spell of Master Fwap, a Buddhist monk. Our hero is not particularly given to introspection, but Fwap makes him understand why snowboarding is his destiny and how it will lead him to spiritual completion. Under Fwap's guidance he progresses along the way of purification and enlightenment and improves his snowboarding technique at the same time. He also meets Nadia, a Danish tourist who's spent years mastering Zen Buddhism. Nadia introduces him to Tantric sex, and though he makes good progress under her and Fwap's lead, he eventually rebels: ``While I loved both Master Fwap and Nadia, they just weren't like me. My world was competitive athletics, and theirs was enlightenment.'' So he goes home to Santa Monica, but he finds that he just can't take up his old life as a surfer anymore: Too much has change, there's too much he still doesn't understand. Finally, he decides that he has to go back to Fwap to ``solve the riddle of the missing dimensions.'' Despite long and extremely boring passages about techniques of meditation and asceticism, this may nevertheless be one of the funniest books of the last five years. Lenz has written a comic masterpiece, whether he meant to or not.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15293-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
Too much hocus-pocus, not enough focus. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Part of Hoffman's great talent is her wonderful ability to sift some magic into unlikely places, such as a latter-day Levittown (Seventh Heaven, 1990) or a community of divorcées in Florida (Turtle Moon, 1992).
But in her 11th novel, a tale of love and life in New England, it feels as if the lid flew off the jar of magic—it blinds you with fairy dust. Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned sisters, only 13 months apart, but such opposites in appearance and temperament that they're dubbed ``Day and Night'' by the two old aunts who are raising them. Sally is steady, Gillian is jittery, and each is wary, in her own way, about the frightening pull of love. They've seen the evidence for themselves in the besotted behavior of the women who call on the two aunts for charms and potions to help them with their love lives. The aunts grow herbs, make mysterious brews, and have a houseful of—what else?—black cats. The two girls grow up to flee (in opposite directions) from the aunts, the house, and the Massachusetts town where they've long been shunned by their superstitious schoolmates. What they can't escape is magic, which follows them, sometimes in a particularly malevolent form. And, ultimately, no matter how hard they dodge it, they have to recognize that love always catches up with you. As always, Hoffman's writing has plenty of power. Her best sentences are like incantations—they won't let you get away. But it's just too hard to believe the magic here, maybe because it's not so much practical magic as it is predictable magic, with its crones and bubbling cauldrons and hearts of animals pierced with pins. Sally and Gillian are appealing characters, but, finally, their story seems as murky as one of the aunts' potions—and just as hard to swallow.
Too much hocus-pocus, not enough focus. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)Pub Date: June 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14055-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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