A satisfying mystery and sympathetic characterization make this author a writer to watch.
A down-at-the-heels journalist returns to his hometown to investigate the murder of an old friend in this debut novel.
Wes Byrne, former reporter, is at the end of his rope. His most important story—the investigation into illegal dumping of toxic waste into a river—resulted in a family’s blaming him for a man’s death; his beloved wife, Jan, succumbed to ovarian cancer; and his grief so informed his recent work at the Providence Sentinel that he’s been sacked from his columnist job for being too depressing. When his friend Stevie Darby is stabbed to death in a bar, Byrne is forced to travel to his hometown for the funeral, where his luck stubbornly refuses to get better. He has no sooner arrived back in East Hastings when his Camry is stolen; he’s reacquainted with a former bully–turned-cop; and a potential liaison with an ex-crush is spoiled by her sudden, violent death. Pretty soon, Byrne is up to his ears in a conspiracy involving a car theft ring and the export of stolen goods, punctuated by a rash of murders that all echo the death of Stevie. And when his former editor Hopkins Brewster “Hoppy” Weatherly demands that he use his talents for the local paper, Byrne begins to wonder whether any story is worth the damaging fallout. If this all sounds too grim to be entertaining, fear not. The prose is fluid and eminently readable, and what could have been a hard-boiled ordeal is given a light, almost irreverent touch. Essick boasts an affectionate eye for the dynamics of male friendship and the vagaries of small-town life. (At one point, Byrne muses about a local diner: “The mention of the Town Crier brought back warm memories of teen-age nights spent languishing in the comfortably upholstered booths and sharing tall tales of sexual exploits.”) This helps mitigate Byrne’s inherent passivity and inertia as a protagonist and those occasional moments when the light touch veers into farce and verges on glib. These minor flaws prevent the novel from being as compelling a read as it could have been. But Essick’s skillful handling of both characterization and the central mystery means that, while the pages may not turn as quickly as they could, it’s still an enjoyable read.
A satisfying mystery and sympathetic characterization make this author a writer to watch.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62694-809-9
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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