A well-told story about finding new beginnings in the aftermath of defeat.
Bourg’s debut novel takes an epic look at French defeat in Vietnam and the entwined lives of the locals, soldiers and foreign nationals trying to survive in unstable times.
Max Kohl, a German and a career soldier who grew up indoctrinated in the Hitler Youth, now finds himself in the French Foreign Legion. In 1954, he walks out of Isabelle, a remote area of the Dien Bien Phu province. Loc, a Tai who has sided with the French, leads Max out of the mountainous battlefield after the French are defeated by the Vietminh. The two become infamous and inseparable, navigating post-colonialism in Saigon and Laos. Max decides to no longer blindly follow the causes of those who employ him; instead, he leads his life by repaying the loyalty of others and protecting those he cares about. Max and Loc cross paths with Petru Rossi, a Corsican gangster focused on keeping his interests in the opium trade. Also in the opium and information business is CIA agent Tom Roche, who works with Max to help a mountain tribe escape to Laos. In turn, Max helps the Americans solidify their place in Vietnam through covert missions and violent encounters. In another third-person perspective, the book also follows Mei, who becomes a concubine for the French troops after being sold into prostitution by her father. Loc briefly crosses paths with Mei in Dien Bien Phu but isn’t reunited with her until after she is released from a communist labor camp. Bourg provides a detailed account of the battle that marks the fall of France in Vietnam as well as Max and Loc’s journey out of Isabelle. Many situations and characters are introduced, which Bourg capably manages, and character development is strong, particularly for a novel this heavily rooted in action. Most compellingly, Max changes from a hardened hired soldier to a loyal member of his makeshift family with Loc and Mei.
A well-told story about finding new beginnings in the aftermath of defeat.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9910076-0-8
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Three Greyhounds
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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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