A lively, occasionally harrowing journey into obsession.
A college wrestler is driven to win, to the detriment of his mental health.
The captivating narrator of Habash’s debut novel is a sinewy senior at a small North Dakota college on a last-ditch effort to win the Division IV championship in his weight class. To do so, he takes easy-A classes (“Drawing II, Meteorology I, Basic News Writing, and What Is Nothing?”) and works out like a fiend (“I’m skin and gristle and little water”). But it’s clear early on that something is off. He mentions his childhood as an orphan only to deny its impact, and his macho rhetoric takes bizarre turns: “It’s my job to make other people upset and sad,” “Everything outside of wrestling is devoid of mystery and deep faith,” “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” In short, Stephen is a classic unreliable narrator, which makes him as fascinating to experience—Habash plainly glories in his hero’s digressions and non sequiturs—as he is difficult to root for. He’s a bully with opponents, alienating with his teammates, and clumsy in a budding relationship. Once a meniscus tear threatens to keep him out of competition, his angry, obsessive nature (“I gargle discontent”) drives him to investigate dark rumors about coaches and teachers. That’s a canny provocation to the reader: recognize he’s unhinged or respect his sense of justice? Either way, Habash writes about the raw physicality of wrestling better than anybody this side of John Irving (“I push his far shoulder like I’m crowbarring open Tut’s tomb or I’m Lazarus moving aside the rock for the big reunion”), and though the story is overlong given Stephen’s straightforward trajectory, the novel’s grim, intense mood is admirably sustained. For this well-intentioned but troubled man, every victory is a pyrrhic one.
A lively, occasionally harrowing journey into obsession.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-56689-464-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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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