A well-written, thoughtful debut with wide crossover potential. Inclán never condescends and never judges, preferring to let...
A 17-year-old high-schooler gives birth, with no one to help but her even younger sister: the first in NAL’s new line of women’s fiction.
No one seems to notice the pregnancy—not Kate Phillips’s teachers and certainly not her father Davis, who spends most of his free time with his girlfriend Hannah and her two young boys, stopping by his old house only occasionally. Seeing his own teenaged daughters only reminds Davis of their mother, Deirdre, a vibrant, much-loved, much-missed woman who recently died of breast cancer. His wife’s friends have given up asking after Kate and Tyler, despite their concerns—not that Kate minds. She’s never been the talkative type, and her cheerleader sister Tyler, 15, has been sworn to secrecy. The girls prepare for everything, combing through thrift stores and resale shops to provide a layette for the baby Kate is determined to deliver at home, without a doctor or midwife. They also study birthing books and videos, although the possibility of complications makes Tyler increasingly uneasy. But together the two manage to bring the baby into the world despite many hours of difficult labor. The exhausted young mother nurses her newborn daughter, whom she names Deirdre, and the sisters get her settled in an improvised nursery they’ve set up in a closet. Meanwhile, they attend school in shifts, rarely leaving the baby alone for more than an hour at a time. But the infant’s crying gives the girls away at last. Kate and Tyler are immediately placed in foster care, the baby is taken away (temporarily), and their father is forced to defend himself on charges of abandonment.
A well-written, thoughtful debut with wide crossover potential. Inclán never condescends and never judges, preferring to let her subtly drawn people speak for themselves. The understanding portrayal of her teenaged heroines—stubborn, careless, and fiercely honest—is remarkably astute.Pub Date: May 8, 2001
ISBN: 0-451-20282-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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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