Despite some witty banter, there is little to distinguish this book, or Eden as a character, from others of the chick-lit...
Iconic muse of the New York City art scene contemplates cougardom as 40 looms.
Eden is sure her ethereal beauty will be her ticket out of her backwater hometown. Drawn to Manhattan by the lure of a modeling career, the fetching high-school dropout, after a brief stint as head groupie to a rock star, latches on to Wes, a sensitive, bespectacled architecture student. Soon, however, an older man, Otto, a painter at the top of the art heap, notices 19-year-old Eden and whisks her away to his rarified world of international jetsetters, well-heeled collectors and post-Warhol hedonism. Otto paints Eden in various states of undress, and, overnight, she’s a worldwide sensation, beating out Demi Moore for glossy cover space. Otto and Eden cohabit, travel the world and produce a son, but they never marry. Through it all, Eden turns to her trash-talking high-school buddy Allison for moral support. Allison’s fluency in the latest argot, and her role as cynical foil to Eden’s at times enervating guilelessness, enliven the book, but not often enough. When Otto seduces his latest dewy assistant, Eden storms out, heading uptown, where her looks, still holding at 39, net another conquest: Chase, scion of old-money Upper East Siders, handsome enough to flummox an entire gay bar even if he’s only there for Broadway Karaoke. He falls hard for Eden, although she’s 12 years older, scandalizing his mother Brooke. His grandmother Ruthie urges Chase to bust out of his noblesse oblige and throw off the yoke of Brooke and his “Hitchcock blonde” girlfriend Liesel, whom Chase has kept hankering after the diamond in Ruthie’s vault way too long. When Liesel dumps him, Chase’s path to Eden is clear, but a chance encounter reopens Eden’s roads not taken, with predictable results.
Despite some witty banter, there is little to distinguish this book, or Eden as a character, from others of the chick-lit genre.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-525-95159-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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