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THE ANOMALIES

Name: THE ANOMALIES
Author: Joey Goebel
ISBN: 1-931561-29-X

by Joey Goebel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2003

Dispensing with plot, Goebel wings it, credibility take the hindmost. It doesn’t work.

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First novel by the 21-year-old Goebel, former lead singer of the punk band The Mullets: a tale of five oddballs who form a rock band in small-town Kentucky:

Watch them make heads turn: the wild-eyed young black man (Luster); the smoking hot blonde in the wheelchair (Aurora); the feisty octogenarian in the cowboy boots (Opal); the hellraising third-grader Opal baby-sits (Ember); and an effeminate Iraqi (Ray). These are the eponymous Anomalies, who’ve come together under Luster’s direction to play “power-pop new wave heavy metal punk rock.” The players are introduced awkwardly, by multiple narrators in writing that stumbles from social realism to cartoonish whimsy. Thus protagonist Luster is both an industrious commissary runner at a dog-racing track and a lonely Mr. Clean in a family of drug-dealers (12 brothers, all called Jerome). What becomes clear soon enough is that this messy debut is the latest report from the front in America’s never-ending cultural clash between the Hip and the Square, between free spirits and those whom Luster contemptuously dismisses as “humanoids.” Unfortunately, Goebel’s formulation is tired (the humanoids “are all hooked up to the same giant mechanical brain”) and the battle lines not sharply drawn. We are left with a buzz of angry voices. Aurora is so angry with the predatory guys who keep hitting on her that she takes refuge in a wheelchair, though there is nothing wrong with her; Opal is angry with her nieces and her therapist; Luster and Ember are angry with just about everybody. Four angry band members, all fired up with nowhere to go. The exception is Ray, a gentle soul who has drifted over from Vonnegut country. His quixotic mission is to find and apologize to the GI he wounded in the Gulf War. He succeeds, but the unintended consequence is that the band’s one and only gig descends into bloody mayhem.

Dispensing with plot, Goebel wings it, credibility take the hindmost. It doesn’t work.

Pub Date: April 16, 2003

ISBN: 1-931561-29-X

Page Count: 208

Publisher: MacAdam/Cage

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003

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.