Lanchester's debut in the recent cookbook-cum-novel sweepstakes is a tour de force certain to please some highly, while others may be worn down by an incremental pace and unceasingly (if expertly) mannered tone. What can be told without spoiling the tale—for there's a mystery here—is that the book is the story of a life, the life is that of an Englishman named Tarquin (originally Rodney) Winot, and Winot himself is the speaker of every carefully weighed sentence and exquisitely formed paragraph from start to end. A world-class chef and scholar extraordinaire (he calls himself an artist) of food and cuisine (not to mention manners, lore, and history in general), Winot hasn't lived a life that could be called underprivileged: With an ex-actress mother and an international- businessman father, both Winot and his older brother Bartholomew (who went on to become an internationally lionized artist and sculptor) were raised in a world of comfort and sophistication. Living both in London and Paris, the children had the benefit of cooks, nannies, and tutors—whose amusing quirks, oddities, and (above all) curious demises are narrated by Winot with customarily dry but unflaggingly amusing understatement and wit. As the book opens, the irrepressible Winot is driving through France, offering up opinions on the wines, foods, and art of Normandy and Brittany as he heads, ostensibly, for his house in Provence. He does reach the house, but things take on a deepened tone when he hooks up certain electronic spying devices, trails a young couple, and finally grants an interview—in which, to the reader, the increasingly mannered Winot at last reveals all—with a biographer- to-be of his illustrious brother. From a raconteur second to none, then, a whole-earth monologue that lectures on subjects from pancakes to poison peaches, gives opinions on matters from clothing to curry, and touches on life's crises from cradle to grave. For the intellectual reader, a feast, complete with hint of decay. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Granta; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-4388-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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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