Jam-packed with stereotypes, bad sex scenes, and clichés of every kind, this book has something to appall almost anyone.
The summer of 1992 is pure hell on an insular islet off the coast of Long Island.
“GRUDDER IS CANCER / GRUDDER KILLS,” reads the graffiti on the local war memorial. Tensions flare on Avalon Island as a defense contractor called Grudder Aviation runs into economic and environmental problems. Dealing with the fallout both publicly and privately are three generations of the islands' most prominent families, who live on magnificent side-by-side estates. If an author is God to her characters, the people of Avalon must have done something to offend Fierro (Cutting Teeth, 2014). For lo, she hath visited upon them toxic waste; racial bigotry; class resentment; vandalism; children strung out on drugs watching snuff and porn videos; abusive fathers, husbands, and dog owners; senile dementia; a weak peacetime economy; the rise of Bill Clinton; murder; suicide; stillbirth; and, undoubtedly worst of all, a biblical plague of gypsy moth caterpillars, described over and over in excruciating detail. Young lovers take to the woods—and listen to “the cack-cacking of the caterpillars feeding and the patter of chewed-up leaves spat thousands at a time onto the forest floor.” Jeans are “spattered with [the] black slime” of caterpillar excrement, the little buggers are found in socks, bras, and ball gowns, there are “swarm[s] of caterpillars slithering across the window” and hands “slick with their gummy remains.” Still, as one character points out, "perhaps a plague was just what the island needed." To get them through these revolting times, the characters find inspiration in sources as diverse as the plot of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the essays of James Baldwin, and the radical enlightenment offered by Oprah: “After each Oprah episode, she was depleted. To have eighty years of preconceived notions shattered, and then rearranged, in just forty-five minutes.”
Jam-packed with stereotypes, bad sex scenes, and clichés of every kind, this book has something to appall almost anyone.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08751-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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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