This insightful study of relationships is a party that’s not to be missed.
A weekend getaway takes an intense turn in Farewell’s (Hilda’s General Store, 2015, etc.) latest novel.
Bess and Mitt Blasdale own the Evergreen Inn, a haven for rest and relaxation in the picturesque Vermont countryside. A snowstorm foils their plans for a large house party, though a few hardy souls manage to make the trip. Bess’ old and dear friend, Sadie, drives down from Maine despite the blizzard, and Olivia Rathbone and her husband, Simon, are delivered by Gregg Galleon, a good Samaritan who rescues them after their car overturns on the road. The small group is snowed in at the Evergreen without phones or access to the outside world. Despite the weather, it should be an enjoyable weekend spent in the company of good food and friends. Unfortunately, it turns out that Gregg is Sadie’s ex-husband, a recovering alcoholic whose tryst with her sister ended their marriage. In addition, Bess reveals that she’s planning to leave Mitt and sell the inn, while Olivia and Simon constantly snipe at each other and quarrel over his post-retirement lifestyle. Tensions are high as the six snowbound inhabitants navigate around awkward silences, marital disappointments, and long-buried feelings of anger, sorrow, frustration, and loss. Sadie is adamant that she can’t forgive Gregg, but a dark turn of events causes her to rethink her position. Farewell’s novel feels much like a play as she skillfully sets the stage and populates her narrative with witty and complicated characters. The cozy Evergreen Inn is the perfect backdrop for scenes full of nuanced character development and well-scripted dialogue. Olivia, for example, is a Pandora’s box of judgment, ego, and hypocrisy who incessantly pecks at her retiree spouse. Yet Farewell manages to balance Olivia’s flaws with characteristics that render her admirable and even likable at times. Throughout the novel, the author provides ample opportunities for the characters to hash out their problems and air their grievances, peeling away the complicated layers of emotions like a chef with a sharp paring knife.
This insightful study of relationships is a party that’s not to be missed.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-68419-588-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Puddingdale Press
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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