This raw tale about a harrowing journey leaves a mark.
A young man struggles with the realities of a life-altering disease in this debut novel.
The Hero—a 24-year-old Canadian music store manager with a number of face piercings—is sick: “His head hurt and his world was spinning. He awoke in his basement feeling lethargic and slow. The stairs to the main floor were narrow, old and daunting. He ascended them as deftly as he could, avoiding steps that were notoriously weak.” He decides to go to the doctor, who tells him he has the flu. He returns home and goes to sleep. When he wakes up again, he’s in a hospital bed—where he discovers he’s been in a coma for weeks. His parents tell him that he’s suffering from encephalitis—inflammation of the brain—and that he’s now legally a quadriplegic. From there, he begins a long, arduous journey back to normal life—or as normal a life as is still available to him. The road is full of surprises, most of them bad, and the Hero rarely feels hopeful about his chances. Interspersed with this man’s odyssey are self-contained vignettes about others dealing with extreme scenarios: A woman is trapped in an endless simulated space mission; a man in a wheelchair is drawn into a terrorist plot; a kidnapped man waits to be murdered by his captors. Garden’s prose is muscular and biting, capturing the numbing anguish that is the Hero’s general state of being: “He had fallen prey to what is called ‘hospitalization.’ The idea was that time had lost its meaning due to being months in four walls where he was dictated what to do and when. He had also lost all respect for death he had once had. He watched people give up all hope.” The book is a brutal read. To highlight his dehumanizing experience, the Hero does not have a name, and there are few characters in his story. As it goes on, readers will begin to feel the same creeping horror experienced by the Hero. The vignettes make up the weaker half of the equation: They read a bit like undercooked Chuck Palahniuk premises. While the novel does not fully coalesce, it manages to elicit strong feelings, requiring that readers consider human suffering and the uncertainty that it brings.
This raw tale about a harrowing journey leaves a mark.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-9084-2
Page Count: 204
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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