THE NIGHT BUFFALO

Name: THE NIGHT BUFFALO
Author: Guillermo Arriaga
ISBN: 0-7432-8185-3

by Guillermo Arriaga ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2006

A flashback-heavy movie concerning the obsessed mind of Manuel and his memories of Gregorio and Tania might make for a more...

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Though Arriaga has impressed with his provocative screenplays, the first novel published in the U.S. by the Mexican writer falls flat on the page.

Many of the themes here of blood, betrayal, loyalty and man’s animal instincts will be familiar to fans of 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, both scripted by Arriaga. Even so, this novel follows a strong set-up with minimal payoff. At the core of the plot is a romantic triangle. Most of what’s significant reveals itself in the first few pages. Narrator Manuel feels guilt toward his best friend, Gregorio, who has recently been released from a mental institution after showing some severely self-destructive tendencies. Gregorio appears willing to reconcile with Manuel, who had slept with (and remains very much in love with) Gregorio’s girlfriend, Tania. Now in their early 20s, all three had been close friends at least since their early teens, until Tania chose Gregorio as her boyfriend and Manuel as her secret lover. Manuel has also slept with Gregorio’s sister and has an uneasy relationship with his younger brother. On page three, Gregorio commits suicide, leaving the characters with the rest of the novel to resolve their various issues of guilt, love and lust. Nothing ever really gets resolved, though Gregorio and his hallucination, the titular “Night Buffalo,” remain omnipresent in the mind of Manuel, in particular. As for Tania, it’s hard to know exactly what she’s thinking, whether her love and allegiance lie with the living or the dead. The combination of existential navel-gazing and south-of-the-border bloodlust (like a Mexican mélange of Albert Camus and Cormac McCarthy) wears thin over a couple hundred pages with minimal narrative momentum. The resolution offers too little, too late.

A flashback-heavy movie concerning the obsessed mind of Manuel and his memories of Gregorio and Tania might make for a more compelling experience than this curiously inert novel.

Pub Date: May 23, 2006

ISBN: 0-7432-8185-3

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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...

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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

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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.

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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.