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FLORENCE IN ECSTASY

Name: FLORENCE IN ECSTASY
Author: Jessie Chaffee
ISBN: 978-1-944700-17-1

by Jessie Chaffee ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2017

An enigmatic but engaging debut.

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A Boston woman tries to treat her eating disorder by traveling to a place where she knows no one, the art-filled city of Florence, Italy.

Hannah is well-aware that anorexia nervosa and bulimia—conditions that began when she was 28—can be life-threatening or lead to serious, long-term health problems. She also understands that they’re difficult to treat. She's gone to doctors and psychotherapists, but neither has helped her. Friends and family are worried, especially since the illness has caused Hannah to lose her job in a Boston art museum. Hannah resents their constant badgering and opts for a change of scene, traveling to the Tuscan capital and settling in a city known for abundant religious and secular art. For a time, it works: Hannah is passionate about studying the great works on display nearly everywhere she goes and does well, perusing typical tourist hot spots and eating, drinking, and making friends with members of a local rowing club. She finds a boyfriend, the slightly older Luca, and, after several months of relaxed vacationing, even finds employment at the private Serroni Library, a feat that enables her to support herself once her savings are exhausted. Then, a random encounter with a former colleague triggers a relapse. Within days of the meeting, Hannah cuts herself off from everyone. She stops going to work, stops eating, stops answering the phone, and retreats into books about female saints who literally starved themselves to death in pursuit of a connection with God. Catherine of Siena, who ate and drank almost nothing so she would be “empty for prayer,” and St. Angela, who “stripped [herself] of everything,” hold Hannah in thrall. It’s upsetting to witness her precipitous decline. At the same time, the novel never fully explains how or why the disorder developed; Hannah herself seems mystified by its sudden appearance. Still, since eating disorders usually manifest in adolescence, and not in 20-something adults like Hannah, the story begs for a bit more detail.

An enigmatic but engaging debut.

Pub Date: May 16, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-944700-17-1

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Unnamed Press

Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.