A romp through mystery, science fiction and popular culture that will please readers looking for a smarter breed of fantasy.
A witty, fast-paced novel about a hack journalist and an unbelievable headline come to life.
Matthew Granger, a once-promising journalist living in the shadow of an illustrious father, travels around the rural news beats for the Fortean publication World News Explorer, looking for scoops on bat boys, Hitler’s heads and even the faintest insinuation of a UFO. Taylor renders the psychology of the younger Granger in an authentic, competent indirect discourse; Granger’s thoughts, observations and anxieties are at once charming and exasperating as his witty, keen consciousness charms readers to his side. Armed and cursed with a photographic memory, Granger is made an all-too keen observer of the most significant and trivial details of his stream of consciousness, but it’s this special ability that allows him to pierce the veil while rummaging through the gossip and local folklore of another backwater town with a tall tale to tell. Peppered throughout the opening passages of the novel are unsettling interludes of Granger’s experience in a room, vacillating between sensations of piercing light and darkness, until eventually it is revealed that these disjointed episodes are the calling cards of a personal abduction that he had previously treated as mere copy fodder. The novel remains true to its title and without breaking the carefully plotted suspension of disbelief, Granger uncovers the reality behind the panoply of abduction mythology without resorting to extraterrestrial vistas or campy cosmic journeys. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t wonderful elements of fantasy; his relationship with the creature Little One and Granger’s attempt to develop fluent telepathic communication are rendered with humor and insight as he finds Little One’s lack of extraverbal communication frustrating and intriguing. Taylor writes carefully and craftily in a story that pays homage to the absurdity and pathos at the heart of a culture that wishes crop circles were more than just pranks on a grand, if not cosmic, scale.
A romp through mystery, science fiction and popular culture that will please readers looking for a smarter breed of fantasy.Pub Date: May 18, 2011
ISBN: B0051P0OWI
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Kindle Edition
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2011
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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