An overlong but effective indictment of the evils of violence against children.
After surviving horrific violence at a young age, a woman dedicates her life to preventing child abuse in Bassler’s debut novel.
When 7-year-old Cindy is brutally beaten by her stepfather, her injuries are so severe her doctor likens them to those he’s seen from “high-speed car accidents.” After several months of rehabilitative therapy, Cindy relearns how to walk and talk, but the abuse has changed her life forever. Although she has a resilient spirit, the support of caring doctors and loving foster parents to help her overcome her trauma, she doesn’t forget what happened to her. As an adult, she dedicates herself to helping other abused children as a social-services caseworker. She does save some kids from violence, but her failures haunt her—particularly one involving young Brittany, who was murdered by her father. Cindy resolves that the best way to stop severe child abuse is to run for office, with a goal of making child abuse a federal crime. The Green Party supports her candidacy for U.S. Senate, and after an unlikely plot twist, Cindy wins the election. She outmaneuvers cynical Senate power players through luck and force of will, and eventually sees her sweeping child-abuse legislation passed. She then personally lobbies the president to sign the bill into law, arguing that doing so will allow him to “write [his] name in the history books.” Bassler’s accounts of child abuse are appropriately brutal, and include horrifying, clinical descriptions of children’s injuries (“her head snapped back, cracking the vertebrae and severing her spinal cord”), as well as child-abuse statistics (“an estimated 906,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect last year”). However, although Cindy’s quest to stop abuse is a noble one, she never quite emerges as a three-dimensional character; indeed, her only distinguishing qualities are her childhood trauma and her saintly devotion to her cause. The novel, at more than 700 pages, is also swollen with extraneous details and characters, such as Cindy’s kind, supportive boyfriend Frank, who is unceremoniously dumped when she decides to run for the Senate. Readers who persevere, however, will likely enjoy this story about child abuse and survival.
An overlong but effective indictment of the evils of violence against children.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615671659
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Herald Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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