Warm and chummy exploration of how friends can become our chosen families.
The sudden death of their close friend in a terrorist attack triggers big changes in the lives of four school friends who reunite after 20 years.
When affable British-born internet mogul Tom Fitzgerald’s Boston-bound train is bombed, his stunned friends get together at his memorial service in London to reflect on his, and their own, lives. All in their late 30s, the group includes journalist Paul, Hollywood actress Saffron and earthy Olivia, who runs an animal shelter. There is also Tom’s longtime “best friend” Holly, a part-time illustrator and mother of two married to a rich lawyer. On the surface, their lives appear placid enough, but as they rekindle their friendship the cracks appear. Onetime womanizer Paul is happily married to Swedish businesswoman Anna, but the two are going broke over repeated in-vitro treatments that the increasingly child-desperate Anna insists on having. Olivia, in contrast, finds herself single and pregnant, and at a loss over what to do. Saffron is a recovering alcoholic carrying on a secret relationship with a married movie star she met in AA. And Holly—perhaps hit hardest by Tom’s death—feels increasingly alienated from her pompous prig of a husband Marcus, and preoccupied over what might have been with Tom if the two had only acted on their attraction, and not married other people. In her vulnerable state, Holly grows closer to Tom’s younger brother Will, a charming carpenter who nursed a secret crush on her when they were kids. Another crisis tightens the group after Saffron’s affair is exposed, and she falls off the wagon. Then they all congregate at Paul and Anna’s dilapidated rural home, for more bonding, rebuilding and assorted country shenanigans. Considering its subject matter, Green’s latest (Swapping Lives, 2006, etc.) is neither morbid nor overly sentimental, with sensible and appealing characters who, for the most part, end up doing the right thing.
Warm and chummy exploration of how friends can become our chosen families.Pub Date: June 19, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-03857-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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