A vampire’s entertaining journey of self-discovery.
In this debut novel, a fat, balding accountant/vampire tries to take charge of his boring life.
Two years after becoming a vampire, Victor Thetherson still masks the taste of expired blood-bank blood with Bloody Mary mix and vodka. The problem is that he can’t bring himself to actually bite anyone. He’d hoped that becoming a vampire would give him a new lease on his unsatisfying life in Houston, but it’s clear that people don’t see “Vampire Vic” as any more of a threat than they did the old Victor. No one fears him, or even respects him, and he lives the same dull life as he did before. When his company’s upcoming merger threatens to eliminate not only his job, but those of the employees who depend upon him, he decides to take the first step toward transforming his life—by biting people. As Victor embraces his vampire self, he finds that he’s still not the man he dreamed of becoming as a youth, so he starts working out and begins commanding respect. Some readers might say that no vampire story is complete without a vampire killer, but this story could have done without Eugene Foreman, a scrawny slayer in a Zorro costume set on destroying Victor. Readers will find the story’s true intrigue not in the mortal confrontation between Victor and his opponents but in his inner struggle and personal determination to reclaim his life. It’s sometimes difficult to keep track of the numerous secondary characters, although they’re moderately well-developed; the women in Victor’s life, in particular, are nearly interchangeable. Although the novel leaves a lot of loose ends, particularly regarding Victor’s relationship with a woman named Darla, his story comes satisfyingly full circle, making him a relatable hero among accountants. The novel may find an audience among fans of workplace comedies such as the 1999 cult film Office Space.
A vampire’s entertaining journey of self-discovery.Pub Date: March 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0988895713
Page Count: 318
Publisher: HarrisGray
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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