PBS news anchor Lehrer, now a veteran novelist (Purple Dots, 1998, etc.), attempts a morality tale here. The result,...
A near-miss about man's inhumanity to man—in war and then in peace.
He's become the much respected, almost revered, now retired Bishop Quincy Watson of Boston, but 50 years ago he flew a B29 that rained firebombs on Tokyo until the Japanese shot him down. Though he survived the crash, Quincy spent much of the time that followed wishing he hadn't. Fliers, especially bomber pilots, were viewed with maximum hostility by their captors. Quincy found himself labeled a 'special prisoner,' a category the Japanese reserved for war criminals. Degraded, tortured, threatened daily with death and worse, he was one of a minuscule number of special prisoners who managed to live through the experience. At the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, on an otherwise ordinary day, his glance happens to connect with someone else's. Seconds later, that man is lost in the airport crowd, but Quincy is certain he's recognized the eyes ('two dark brown lasers') belonging to his former chief tormentor, Japanese Lieutenant Tashimoto. Quincy goes on a hunt, traces his prey to a hotel in San Diego, and confronts the man in his room. Tashimoto denies everything he's accused of, insists the two have never met and that during the war the US, not Japan, behaved like an outlaw nation. Quincy calls him a liar on all counts. Hate regenerated is as implacable as ever. It explodes into sudden violence, the long-term ramifications of which are tragic and embittering.
PBS news anchor Lehrer, now a veteran novelist (Purple Dots, 1998, etc.), attempts a morality tale here. The result, unfortunately, is frustratingly elusive. The POW scenes are riveting, but the plotting, particularly the denouement, seems wrenched to fit a fixed idea, making the tale hard to believe and the seeming morality hard to track.Pub Date: May 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50371-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
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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