An engrossing thriller—and first novel—that displays a firm grasp of conspiracy theory and a light touch in making its wickedly outrageous premise at least plausible. The tale is set in 1989—when cold war exigencies still preoccupied intelligence operatives throughout the world—and is narrated by T.C. Steele, a sardonically detached analyst in the upper echelons of the National Security Agency and a Yale alum who knows his way around the establishment. At the heart of the matter is Rebecca Townsend, a gorgeous NSA recruiter who, unbeknownst to her employer, is part of a Rothschild-like clan (the ``Disciples'') that, in the wake of WW II, fanned out from Germany to the four corners of the earth. While making their way in many lands, the 12 branches of the family covertly collected the deepest military/industrial secrets of the US, Soviet Union, and a host of other nations. Four decades on, the self-anointed apostles of a genuinely new world order are preparing to release the amassed information in order to stalemate not only the superpowers but also such traditional foes as Israel and the Arab Bloc. The plot thickens when Rebecca, who's lulled her government masters into a false sense of security, falls in love with seemingly innocent young architect Tommy Wood. Co-opted by the NSA (whose eavesdropping yields bits and pieces of the unfolding story), Wood does constant battle for his ladylove's kin; he's also at her side for a slam-bang climax when she bests the hired guns of a duplicitous villain in a mid-ocean shootout to transmit data that explains, among other things, why Moscow stood by when the Berlin Wall fell. Steele offers an appropriately donnish wrap-up—with a satisfying twist that ties all loose ends into a very neat package. An impressive debut—and an elegantly executed conceit.
Pub Date: July 6, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-79599-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
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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