A historically rich chronicling of private suffering across time, strata, and space.
In this collection of short stories, a varied cast of characters navigates the trauma of trying to reconcile past with present.
Some tales in Kasten’s (Better Days, 2013, etc.) collection address the ways in which lives in lands that are literally foreign to one another elude harmony. Professor Li Da-Ming weathers the overwhelming task of pursuing a competitive job opportunity in America while past horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution stir within him. An old woman finds herself flooded by memories of the Guatemalan civil war and the Mayan ruins of Tikal while babysitting in America. In one particularly breathtaking story, a boy growing up in World War II-ravaged Germany longs to be a soldier until, years later, he goes to war in Vietnam and is confronted by the “dazed, numb, animal stupidity” of doing so. Other tales are not immigrant stories, but they do address the ways in which past lives are rendered foreign lands by present disturbances. A Midwestern man and his family embark on the same trip he took to New Mexico as a bachelor and despairs when it fails to go as planned. An American veteran watches his cancer-ridden wife approach death and becomes hounded by memories of unprocessed loss. An old man joins a writing workshop and—unanticipatedly—revisits a heartbreaking childhood episode that he cannot bring himself to put on paper. As a whole, the collection swells with heart-rending tension. Kasten’s decision to allow these traumatic stories to find space in her prose—which is lovely and richly detailed—but not necessarily in the exterior lives of the formidably diverse characters is affecting. Further, the author’s expanse of historical knowledge is impressive. The opportunity to dip into an intimate day in the life of each pocket of history she writes about becomes an engrossing adventure for readers. That said, many of the tales’ endings feel either hastened, unfinished, or as if they are working too hard to make story titles relevant, an authorial maneuver that sells these otherwise powerful works short.
A historically rich chronicling of private suffering across time, strata, and space.Pub Date: May 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-09162-3
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Islet Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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