As much a game as a book, Lish’s latest doesn’t quite track for the plot-driven. Language lovers will enjoy it, though, and...
Noted editor and somewhat less noted writer Lish (Krupp’s Lulu: Stories, 2000, etc.) serves up a post-Joycean slice of mannered modernism to mark the twilight of his years (“I’m gaining on 90…”).
Things were different back when: people puffed on cigarettes (“It was, in that lovely era, a dreadfully smoky affair”), drank by the gallon, and talked cleverly. Women did not work—most women, anyway. One who did was a long-lived aunt of Lish’s who figures as the catalyst for this odd exercise in belletristic cryptography, or perhaps cryptographic belles-lettres. Adele Deutsch, who was “never again at liberty to advertise herself under her given name once she had been inducted, in the 1950s, into the National Reconnaissance Office,” offers a curious sort of mentorship to young Lish once he in turn decides it’s time to enter the workaday world, for who doesn’t want to be a spy? She serves up a deliciously cunning puzzle that underlies this book, most of which is made up of uppercase words arrayed in a list that begins “FLUSH LEFT” and ends “ALL SMALL CAPS.” In between are words that a crossword-puzzle aficionado would cherish and your average speaker of English would blink at, from Haecceity to Ensorcelled to Monadological. The whole enterprise seems like sheer self-indulgence at first blush, but look closely at the list, and puzzles emerge: why do the first letters of a particular sequence spell “CRAP”? Why is the word Interpellate repeated four times in a row on one page? Turns out that Adele the Spook, conductor of multiple affairs and presidential medal winner, isn’t just a devilishly hard setter of mental tasks, but also fun, smart, and wholly unique, “a one-of-a-kind outcrop of humankind”, qualities nicely commemorated in this literary memorial.
As much a game as a book, Lish’s latest doesn’t quite track for the plot-driven. Language lovers will enjoy it, though, and it’s a sight more challenging than your average morning sudoku.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-939293-94-7
Page Count: 236
Publisher: OR Books
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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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