From lack of plot to banal dialogue, everything indicates that Hardy has squeezed the last drop out of this provender.
This wisp of a novel is the sixth and final volume in Hardy’s B-Boy Blues series, about two gay black men and their friends and families.
The action, what there is of it, extends over four days in June 2003. It’s been ten years since Mitchell and Raheim became lovers, and four since they broke up. Now, Mitchell is freelancing as a journalist while raising two kids in his Brooklyn brownstone. Errol, one of them, is Raheim’s son (abandoned by him) and about to turn 15. Five-year-old Destiny is the daughter of Mitchell’s mother, thus actually Mitchell’s sister, except that his mother, at 49, decided she was too old to raise another kid, although she’s happy as a loving “grandmother.” Unusual arrangements, but the house runs like clockwork thanks to Mitchell’s expert care. And suddenly everything is coming up roses. Mitchell gets a fabulous job offer as editor in chief of the magazine he’d earlier parted from bitterly (it’s under new ownership). Raheim is on a roll, too. He’s kicked his gambling addiction, with the help of Gamblers Anonymous, and is living harmoniously with his father. He also gets a fabulous offer after a long dry spell—the lead in a movie about a gay ballplayer. And Errol, smart as a whip, is already being courted by Ivy League schools. In what amounts to a long curtain call, some old faces put in appearances. B.D. and Babyface are moving to Canada, where they’ll have a legal marriage. Raheim’s nemesis, Malice, is his nasty old self. Mitchell’s old flame, Montee Simms, is still a sweetheart. Except for Malice, nobody speaks a harsh work in this lovefest. Errol, for example, has forgiven Raheim, just as Raheim has forgiven his dad. The message? Well, “Love is always worth it.” The sweetness is cloying, though the inevitable reconciliation between Mitchell and Raheim is nicely understated.
From lack of plot to banal dialogue, everything indicates that Hardy has squeezed the last drop out of this provender.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-621249-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
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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