bookshelf

THE BODY IS WATER

Name: THE BODY IS WATER
Author: Julie Schumacher
ISBN: 1-56947-042-1

by Julie Schumacher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 1995

bookshelf

First-novelist Schumacher conveys the pain of family life in wonderful, muted, edgy prose, but her story, shaped around a swelling pregnancy, feels hollow in the middle. Jane Haus, in her late 20s, unmarried, and pregnant, returns to live with her father in her childhood home on the New Jersey shore. The old seaside house is not replete with cozy memories: Jane has never felt close to her gruff, grudging father; her mother has been dead for several years and, long before she died, was ill, distant, and preoccupied. Still, this is home, the only one Jane has known, and she spends long, hot summer days obsessively pawing through boxes in the attic, looking for clues that will help make sense of her family. But when her older sister Bee inexplicably moves home too and attempts to take charge of things, it seems to pull the family even further apartuntil Jane's sense of dislocation almost overwhelms her. Schumacher knows just how to construct the secretive and stubborn facade of a family like thisin some ways, the problem is that she does the job too well. Jane, so adept at being guarded with her family, remains elusive, almost numbed, as a character. When pressed for information about her pregnancy, for instance, she's as coy with the reader as she is with her father, and it feels as if some promise has been brokenreaders always expect the inside scoop. It isn't until an extraordinary, cathartic, final scene that we have a real inkling of all that Jane (or Schumacher) has kept bottled up. Now it's going to come pouring out, but too late. The novel is over just as the reader gets her feet wet. An uneven—and, resultingly, thin—debut from a writer with talent.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1995

ISBN: 1-56947-042-1

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Soho

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE
by Julie Schumacher

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SHAKESPEARE REQUIREMENT
by Julie Schumacher

- BOOK REVIEW
DEAR COMMITTEE MEMBERS
by Julie Schumacher

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

bookshelf

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.