A sort of sequel to The Smile of the Stranger, but twice as long and about half as delightful; Aiken attempts a big, double-barreled saga here—absolutely the wrong format for her tart, airy storytelling style. In 1797, 16-year-old Fanny is married off to 48-year-old press-ganger Thomas Paget, an unspeakable brute who drags her with his three lumpy daughters to a country house (on loan from Thomas' cousin Juliana, star of Smile of the Stranger). . . and he proceeds to make her life totally miserable—loveless sex and cruel repression. And after Fanny bears the son that Thomas wants so much, he responds to her few attempts at freedom (chatting with kindly neighbor Lord Egremont and his lovable mistress) by forcing her to wear a straitjacket/chastity-belt. Will Fanny ever get free and get together with gentle, virile gardener Andrew? Will Thomas' evil past (he was responsible for the deaths of his first wife and his half-brother) catch up with him? These are perfectly fine questions, but they're answered, alas, very slowly. Why? Because Aiken alternates Fanny's chapters with the adventures of Thomas' illegitimate India-born cousin Scylla (beauteous palace governess for a Maharajah) and her brother Carloman (a dark poet): when the Maharajah's son stages a bloody coup, Scylla and Carloman rescue the Maharajah's youngest baby and escape, trekking their way towards England to take their rightful Paget family place. Not only is this mountain trek romantic adventure of the most routine sort (harems, beys, rape, escape, a crusty American guide who may be in love with Scylla); it also hurts Fanny's strong but small-scale story—interrupting it, stretching it out, weighing it down with pseudo-seriousness (Carloman and Fanny are linked by the cosmic image of the weeping ash). And when Carloman and Scylla finally do arrive at Fanny's unhappy house, Aiken must lay on too much implausible last-act melodrama (Thomas, Carloman, and Fanny's baby will all die) to clear the way for a neat, happy, two-couple ending. Often very entertaining, then—but the cheery, even slightly goofy Aiken brushwork (her 18th-century patois gets dippier all the time) is not at its best on such a big, busy canvas.
Pub Date: May 9, 1980
ISBN: 0446906816
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980
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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