An engaging reflection on friendship during turbulent times.
Stone’s debut historical novel tells a story of the tumultuous Vietnam War years—from the battlefield and from the Australian homefront.
In 1956, just a few months shy of his daughter’s sixth birthday, Catherine Mary Moreton’s father deserted his wife and young daughter. Her mom packed up their clothes and, with Catherine in tow, left Melbourne, Australia, to live with her parents in Sydney. Now it’s November 1967, and Catherine is waiting to hear if she has been accepted to a university. Her mother declares that Catherine must get a job for the intervening months—and she’s found her a position in a Kings Cross record shop. The sheltered teenager, who was raised in Catholic schools and under the constant supervision of her mother and grandmother, finds herself spending her days in Sydney’s raunchy nightclub district, where she forms an assortment of diverse friendships. Stone, through Catherine’s narration, gives readers an intriguing inside view of her character’s journey from teenager to adult over the next three years. Working at the record shop and as a waitress at La Tête-à-Tête café, she meets many young American GIs who cycle in and out of the city during short leaves from the war: “We had no history, not even that of growing up in the same country,” Catherine notes, “but more often than not, a feeling of familiarity and comfort swaddled our conversations and spilled over into letters once they got back to Vietnam.” Those letters, interspersed throughout the narrative, are an integral part of the story; inspired by correspondence that the author herself received, they effectively reveal the hopes, fears, loneliness, and philosophical musings of young men fighting a war far away from home, unsure of their futures. These are deftly juxtaposed against Catherine’s own search for direction and purpose as she takes her first tentative steps toward independence. Stone only minimally develops her secondary characters, but she still manages to present readers with a poignant, vivid microcosm of a society in the throes of change. A useful glossary defines Australia-specific terminology, such as “Brollie: umbrella” and “Prang: a crash involving a motor vehicle.”
An engaging reflection on friendship during turbulent times.Pub Date: March 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-47524-0
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Bowker identfier
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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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