Podgy prose, bland characters, dated story from this ever-popular husband-and-wife team (A Certain Smile, 1999, etc.).
Troubled family, endless complications.
Sara Elliot was always the perfect one: first-born, straight-A student, bound for medical school, etc. But she gave up her dream three years ago, at 24, when a stroke left her mother infirm and speechless and Sara devoted her life to caring for her adolescent sisters, Carrie and Abby, and ten-year-old brother Doug, meanwhile sticking with her own thankless job of finding luxury housing for loudmouthed rich people who dress badly and condescend to her. Yet, selfless to a fault, Sara never complains, says anything rude or funny, or even asks the burning question that every put-upon soap-opera heroine must ask: When will it be my turn? Maybe never. Mack, her manic, self-absorbed, younger brother is back in town. Perhaps Sara will be forced to confront the flaws in his volatile character—once she gets a nutritious dinner on the table, coaxes her sibs to eat their vegetables and do their homework, and offers moral guidance, fresh bread, and words of wisdom to all. Yet a romantic heart still beats faintly in the steel bosom of this annoying female robot: Reuben, a handsome, rich, also perfect client, seems to be single. But, wait! Is that a vengeful, money-hungry wife in his closet, claiming that Reuben’s bestial sexual demands forced her to have abortions? Sara would cry, if she weren’t a robot. The march of the subplots begins (cue the mighty Wurlitzer). Mack throws a tantrum in the nursing home where his addled mother languishes and explains why he’s so messed up before his dreams of glory make him easy prey for a cigar-chomping, casino-building monster, another of Sara’s clients. Reuben’s wife decides to accept a few zillion dollars, thus freeing Reuben to buy a cool, minimalist loft in New York. But it’s not a real home, Sara frets . . . . Happy ending, rife with platitudes, and it’s a wrap.
Podgy prose, bland characters, dated story from this ever-popular husband-and-wife team (A Certain Smile, 1999, etc.).Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-059929-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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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