A sly, observant report from a rarefied world that’s sure to be another big hit.
Grazer, author of the novel-turned-TV series The Starter Wife (2005), limns two modern American archetypes, the real-estate mogul and his bored socialite wife, doing battle on the moneyed playing field of Manhattan.
Jacks and Cynthia began with visions of an artistic life (she was a ballerina, he a struggling painter), but when she got pregnant, he lost himself in his father’s real-estate empire. Twenty-five years later, at the anniversary gala for a few hundred of their closest friends and enemies, Jacks shows up late, and livid Cynthia smiles for the cameras. The next day, after seeing a photo in the Post of Jacks embracing his latest girlfriend, morning news anchor Lara, Cynthia tells him she wants a divorce, and Jacks moves into the guest quarters. There is little love left between them, but the real estate they share—now that’s something to fight for. They both want the penthouse, and Cynthia is willing to prolong the divorce for years to get it. So Jacks comes up with a scheme straight out of a screwball comedy to pay a handsome young bartender to woo his wife. Meanwhile, Cynthia is becoming an independent woman for the first time since her marriage. With the help of her Zorba-like therapist and straight-talking lesbian daughter, she takes over the directorship of a ballet company. Her experiences reinforce what she already suspected: The life of a socialite isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Jacks, an amusing caricature of a powerful man with an ego of glass (he’s also terrified of his geriatric father), can’t seem to lure Lara into marriage; he’s found the one woman in Manhattan who would rather cover news on the frontlines in Afghanistan than marry a billionaire. Too much of everything is not quite enough for happiness, Grazer cogently demonstrates, but before she gets too serious, romance redeems everyone.
A sly, observant report from a rarefied world that’s sure to be another big hit.Pub Date: June 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9199-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
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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