From noted Portuguese writer Saramago (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, 1993, etc.), a playful "what-if" tale — what if the earth were to crack and the Iberian Peninsula started sailing across the Atlantic? — that also slyly satirizes current European and international politics. As in all good fables, the catastrophe here is preceded by ominous but random happenings that lend an air of bogus authority and mystery to a story that is to be enjoyed as much for itself as for the potshots it takes. In Portugal, Joana Carda, who has just left her husband, scratches the ground with an elm bough, and the line cannot be erased; the famous barkless dogs of Cerb‚re suddenly begin to bark; Joaquim Sassa throws a heavy stone into the sea that lands far out of sight; Jos‚ Anaio, out on a morning stroll, is followed by a flock of starlings; a widow, Maria Guavaira, finds an old sock that endlessly unravels; and in Spain, aging Pedro Orce gets up from his chair and feels the earth tremble beneath his feet. Next, cracks appear along the Pyrenees mountains, and, as they rapidly widen, Spain and Portugal are soon cut off from the rest of Europe. Tourists panic; local peasants occupy the now-empty hotels. As the peninsula heads out into the Atlantic, abandoning the disputed Rock of Gibraltar along the way, politicians make ineffectual statements and vague promises of help; European youths, declaring "We are Iberians too," riot in sympathy. And while the peninsula just misses the Azores, seems bound for Newfoundland, then alters its course and sails south, the long thread that Maria had unraveled somehow brings the apparent prognosticators of the event together. By car and then by wagon, they wander across the land, finding love and adventure along the way, as well as an understanding of "how all things in this world are linked together." A splendidly imagined epic voyage on an unlikely ship manned by political trimmers as well as the loving in heart. A fabulous fable.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-15-185198-0
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The heroine of Dave’s newest post-feminist chick-lit romance (The Divorce Party, 2008, etc.) must choose between the quiet life offered by her new husband and the fast lane her former lover represents.
Only days after 32-year-old Annie gets dumped by longtime live-in boyfriend Nick, an up-and-coming movie director, she meets Griffin at the chichi L.A. restaurant she frequents—talk about romantic fantasy: Annie’s career as a monthly travel columnist pays well, apparently demands little time or difficult travel and is never seriously endangered—and where he is temporarily the chef. It seems to be love at first sight, although Annie’s best friend Jordan, who also happens to be Nick’s sister, calls Griffin “Rebound Guy.” Three months after they meet, he proposes. They marry in a Vegas chapel on their way across the country to Griffin’s western Massachusetts hometown, where he is about to open his own restaurant—Annie’s job with a New York paper also allows her to live anywhere. But Williamsburg requires a lot of adjusting on Annie’s part. Griffin’s genius brother Jesse and his 5-year-old twins move in with the newlyweds because Jesse’s wife has thrown him out for impregnating the MIT professor guiding his doctorate program. The twin’s art teacher turns out to be Gia, until recently Griffin’s girlfriend of 13 years, whom Griffin’s mother makes clear she’d much prefer as a daughter-in-law. Then Nick shows up from his new base in London to win Annie back; she turns him down, but she feels stirrings. When the new Rupert Murdocklike owner of her paper offers her a job in London, Griffin encourages her to try it out. Soon she’s settled in London in a fantastic apartment, the company is grooming her for a new dream job, the publisher’s dashing son is wooing her and Nick is just a call away. What’s a girl to do? A lightweight romance posing as something realistic and psychologically profound.
Pub Date: May 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02267-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
Lightman, a teacher of physics and writing at MIT, evokes the musings of Albert Einstein in this playful, unusual first work of fiction. It is six in the morning, and a sleepy young Einstein slumps at his desk in the patent office, dreaming of the nature of time. Time has been on Einstein's mind a lot lately, and he's become adept at envisioning each of many theories in concrete, three- dimensional form. While Einstein sleeps, Lightman takes the reader through the young genius's imagined worlds, evoking cities in which time is cyclical and citizens are doomed to repeat their triumphs and mistakes eternally; in which people routinely get caught in wandering tributaries of time and are washed back into the past; in which time is believed to flow more slowly at higher altitudes so that all humans, in order to live longer, build their houses on mountaintops; in which there is no connection between cause and effect and people live a carefree existence in each separate moment, and in which it is possible to stop time and live forever within a favorite instant. Occasionally, Einstein wakes up, goes home, dines with a friend, or stares blankly off into the distance, but the focus here is not on his personal life. Instead, with these brief, light vignettes, Lightman offers a glimpse into strange theoretical kingdoms—and also lets the reader in on the workings of a creative scientific mind. Cheerful fantasies, balanced exquisitely between poetry and the popular physics essay. (First serial to Granta and Harper's.)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41646-3
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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