An involving, sentimental yarn of love, secrets, and relationships.
Four aging, gay male friends reunite over a Thanksgiving holiday, unearthing hidden pasts and a smoldering tragedy in Currier’s (A Gathering Storm, 2014, etc.) novel.
The author’s storytelling gifts are on full display in this tale of melodramatic entanglements between a quartet of 40-something friends as they spend a holiday reminiscing at a bucolic North Carolina mountain cabin. The country setting seems to be just what Scott and his younger partner, Aiden, need, and hosts Tom and Harley welcome them with lively conversation about coming out, old boyfriends, their past lives as college students in the big city, the downsides of aging, and their separate attempts to make peace with the loss of close friends from AIDS (the “ghostly baggage strapped to our backs”). Tom, the book’s narrator, shares his personal story of living through the bleak mid-1980s in New York City as a struggling writer, and of his longtime friendship with Scott, whom he met as a postgrad and dated. They “became better friends than lovers, kindred expatriates of unaccepting Southern families.” Things begin to get dicey when a mutual friend named Neal, a pal from Tom’s college days, is mentioned by Aiden, Scott’s lover and a die-hard Southern California urban dweller with “a clear sense of drama.” The talk reveals Neal’s abusive relationship with Aiden’s nephew Perry, which leads to a vicious plot involving obsession and murder-suicide. The violent, unsettling truth forces Tom to begin writing again and fully embrace the love he feels for Harley. Thankfully, Currier’s slim, satisfying novel isn’t overwritten or mired in exposition. Instead, it gets to the heart of the quartet’s issues quickly, creating a swift, dramatic read with plenty of poignancy regarding the plight of gay men in the age of AIDS. Fans of interpersonal dramatics will find much to savor in Currier’s deceptively simple narrative as intimate histories and close friendships mingle with explosive results. No one emerges from the mountain cabin unscathed.
An involving, sentimental yarn of love, secrets, and relationships.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-937627-04-1
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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