There's a little of J.P. Donleavy's Ginger Man in Ong's William, but Fixer Chao is nevertheless an original and perversely...
A complex and troubling portrayal of alienation develops surely from this lively and often very funny first novel by a MacArthur-winning playwright and actor.
Narrator and protagonist William Narciso Paulhina is a Filipino New Yorker "working" as a gay male hustler when he meets Shem C., a Jewish novelist who offers him an intriguing new fictional life. Though initially wary, William agrees to pose as "Master Chao" from Hong Kong, an expert in the Eastern holistic discipline of feng shui ("the merging of intuition with common sense"), the art of creating, through meditation and renunciation, a more benign personal environment. Neurotic and suggestible New Yorkers are easily fleeced, and William (a self-created intellectual of sorts, inspired by Agatha Christie novels and Kurosawa films) discovers a talent for duplicity that enables him to misuse the tactics of feng shui ("taking the faith and warping it for disastrous ends") against the complacent socialites (mainly his in-laws) on whom Shem has (for reasons only partially revealed to William) sworn revenge. It's a nifty plot idea, and Ong fills the story with vividly sketched and functional supporting characters, ranging from the street people who are William's old acquaintances to the topmost of Manhattan's upper crust, and including William's countrywoman Preciosa, a failed film actress and, interestingly, his alter ego; a 90-year-old "Dowager from whom he has much to learn; and Kendo, the beautiful young man whose seductive presence attracts William's lustful attention and propels him toward the explosive climax. And in its moving dénouement, set in Los Angeles, whence William has fled his outraged "clients," Ong brilliantly conveys both William's exhausted regret and self-hatred and the unquenchable vitality of his irrepressible survival instinct.
There's a little of J.P. Donleavy's Ginger Man in Ong's William, but Fixer Chao is nevertheless an original and perversely entertaining creation: a luminous picaresque with a distinctive mixture of farce and savagery.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-15575-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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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