Depending on how readers take to literary conceits, Coetzee's new novel will be received as either a flash of fierce lightning or a rumble of unthreatening thunder. Coetzee (Age of Iron, 1990, etc.) nimbly plucks his premise from a fact — usually treated as incidental — of Fyodor Dostoevsky's life. The Russian novelist had a wastrel stepson, Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev, whom Coetzee imagines died in 1869 (he didn't). Suffering an affliction beyond grief, Fyodor travels to St. Petersburg and takes the room his son last occupied. It's in the home of the dour Anna Sergeyevna Kolenkina, the mother of quick-tongued Matryona. His intention is to reconcile himself to his loss by getting to the bottom of it. What he doesn't count on is learning that what he'd been told was a suicide may have been a murder. Among Pavel's papers, which are in the hands of officials, is a list of people to be assassinated. Pavel was possibly marked for death as part of People's Vengeance, a revolutionary group headed by the opportunistic Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev. As various Dostoevskian themes wink from the lines (the ruthlessness of oppressors, father-son rivalry, the nature of death, madness), the disoriented Fyodor finds himself enamored of Anna as well as caught in Sergei's subversive activities. Eventually, Fyodor is entangled in additional deaths — one on each side of the law — and as the novel reaches its denouement, he suffers a major disillusionment. Handed his stepson's papers, he learns that he loomed as a heavy in the boy's life. He also discovers that Pavel had scribbled crude short stories that could be remade into works of Dostoevskian art. What Coetzee is getting at is not news: Writers mine material from the complexities of their lives and, if necessary, step on toes, "sell everyone," endure "a life without honor." Boldly presumptuous, yet somehow precious.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-85587-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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