A solid, well-written first novel that successfully avoids the saccharine and melodramatic.
Rather than the overwrought tearjerker it might have been—mother acts as surrogate for her infertile daughter—Kaplan (stories: Edge of Marriage, 1999) delivers an affecting and often biting portrait of family relationships.
Born without a uterus, Dale is desperate to have a baby. Adoption has proven difficult, and it seems all avenues are closed—until Dale reads in the paper of a woman who consents to carry a baby for her daughter. After much persuading, Dale’s 48-year-old divorced scientist mother, Maggie, agrees to bear the fertilized egg of Dale and her husband Nate. It seems simple enough (or as simple as these things ever are) to carry the child and at delivery hand it over to the new parents. What Maggie doesn’t count on is the growing attachment she feels for the baby growing inside, or Dale’s surprising detachment from both Maggie and the prospect of motherhood. But life becomes even more complicated for Maggie: not only does she fear her scientific research may again be put on hold (the first interruption to her work came with Dale’s birth), but she begins a passionate, uneasy affair with Ben, a fellow scientist and husband to her best friend Doris. When the baby is born, what Maggie has feared (or hoped) happens. Dale seems incapable of caring for Lily, and Nate is no help as he copes with the repercussions of an affair he had with a student. Maggie takes Lily, and she and Ben (Doris has kicked him out of the house), play at being young parents again. Kaplan’s instinct for character development succeeds in converting straight-from-the-headlines plotting into events that constitute natural progressions in already damaged lives. Though in love with Lily, Maggie knows the arrangement won’t last: eventually the pieces of normalcy will fall back into place, leaving all to reevaluate the meaning of family and trust.
A solid, well-written first novel that successfully avoids the saccharine and melodramatic.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2001
ISBN: 0-316-48211-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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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