Four little women and how they toughed it through World War I: a lively romance so knowing, it's practically jaded—filled with torment, triumph, a panorama of blood and guts, and genitally specific sex. In her American debut, British journalist and author Saunders writes a Rosetta stone of a historical romance, packing in every sentimental convention known to woman. To her credit, she keeps her storylines fresh and energetic and skillfully interwoven until her satisfyingly predictable end. She follows four schoolgirls, who in 1907 take a blood oath to stand by one another no matter what. With multiheroines, no plot possibility escapes Saunders's attention, including the grisly war, women's suffrage, nursing on the front lines, Irish home rule, and the influenza epidemic of 1918. Scottish Jenny sacrifices her true love, Jamie, and their dream to work side by side at a Glasgow clinic for the poor, to marry wealthy, blinded Alistair, who was saved from certain death by his loyal terrier Inky. The dog's wild keening on the battlefield brought stretcher carriers to his master's side. Fine-boned Francesca, an incest survivor with a black fear of sex, marries her mother's young lover, who goes to war to redeem himself. Eleanor, who longs to suffer for love, marries dark, brooding Lorenzo, a wife-beater with mesmerizing eyelashes who obliges her. And red- haired Aurora (``Rory'')—Irish tomboy, suffragette, and ambulance driver—after travails too numerous to mention, finds her heart's desire close to home with Lord Oughterard (``Muttonhead''), a man with unimpeachable personal integrity and an ``endless'' erection. Though sluggish at first, it's an endearingly trashy read. Saunders's heroines achieve orgasm and find true love somewhere near the armistice, or die trying. (First serial to Good Housekeeping)
Pub Date: May 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93764-1
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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