bookshelf

ALL THE WAY HOME

Name: ALL THE WAY HOME
Author: Geoffrey Clark
ISBN: 1-888105-18-6

STORIES AND NOVELLA

by Geoffrey Clark ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 1997

bookshelf

Six stories and a novella make up this plainspoken collection, Clark's fourth (What the Moon Said, 1983, etc.), featuring characters dwelling in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. More particularly, the vulgarity of men, and their class resentments, figure into these often unclear narratives. The first two stories, ``Advance Creek'' and ``Two-Tone Blue,'' concern Margot Weaver, who, at 15, insists on accompanying her disabled dad when he goes fishing late at night. She ends up being raped by another fishermen. Years later, Margot heads back to Michigan after growing fed up with her aspiring writer husband in Rhode Island; her sister greets her with her own sad tale of love lost. Two other pieces focus on sex and angst: In ``The Sprawl of Things,'' a horny, working-class college kid is seduced by a more sexually sophisticated (upper-class) girl. In ``Cow Love,'' a 17- year-old farm boy is set up for his first sex by his older brother, but gets some solid advice about women from his widowed dad—wear rubbers and do no harm. A jogging vegetarian in ``Necessary Deaths'' rues the roadkill he finds on his early morning runs. ``All the Way Home,'' a lengthy novella, is narrated by an obsessive, insecure writer teaching at a small college in Rhode Island. While he claims that his story is meant to be a paean to his best friend and colleague (the narrator of ``Necessary Deaths''), who is suffering at an early age from Alzheimer's, the tale comes across as something far less pleasant. His ill friend attempts to talk the writer into helping him commit suicide. The writer beds the dying man's wife, but argues that despite this the friendship is still intact. For all its efforts at legend-making, the narrator's portrait proves both men to be dishonest and manipulative. The tough-guy stuff is artless and vulgar, not demotic; the clumsy quotations from Hemingway and others only highlight the strained writing and the naturalistic pretensions on display.

Pub Date: April 15, 1997

ISBN: 1-888105-18-6

Page Count: 160

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

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.

bookshelf

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.