A slow-building romantic novel that focuses on the vital bond between lovers.
In Butler’s debut novel, a pianist meets the love of her life but must let him go.
In California, aging actress Lily attends a performance of the talented pianist Katherine Konova, and reflects upon her connection to this red-haired beauty. Decades ago in Russia, Katherine’s poverty-stricken parents, Irina and Maxim, were deeply in love, and both had jobs at a factory where Yazov (nicknamed “The Bull”) was foreman. Irina and Max were convinced that they couldn’t have children, but when Irina falls ill on the job, it’s discovered that she’s pregnant. A few months after Max’s death in a freak accident, Irina marries Yazov, although she doesn’t love him. The child, Katherine, shows a talent for the piano; at 17, she’s accepted at the Moscow Conservatory where she meets Vitaly Prohorov, a married professor whose instruction wasn’t confined to music. After a romantic relationship, the two eventually separate, and Katherine marries and has children. In the present day, writer Daniel Adler has mystical visions of a girl with fiery red hair, and knows he must find her. He has a strained relationship with his mother, feeling much closer to his stepfather, Hans. Daniel attends Goethe University in Frankfurt and embarks on a disastrous relationship with a suicidal woman named Sophie, which doesn’t feed his soul. Impressed by Daniel’s blog, Lily writes Daniel and invites him to America, where he will meet and attempt to win the woman of his dreams. This novel tells a mellow, unassuming story of almost-instantaneous passion between a mature woman and a younger man. The story engagingly reveals layers of information, past and present, amidst a recurring melody of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” It also provides a sense of life in Russia under the shadow of the KGB: At any moment, an innocent citizen could be snatched and accused of wrongdoing, an ordeal that Katherine at one point experiences. Her present-day affair in California plays out against a backdrop of family secrets, which generates suspense throughout. The narrative ends on a dissonant yet hopeful note, with potential for a sequel.
A slow-building romantic novel that focuses on the vital bond between lovers.Pub Date: May 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9911509-1-5
Page Count: 230
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
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