Looks beneath a famous stunt’s sensationalism to discover its roots in tragedy and need.
Based on historical events, this novel tells the story of Annie Edson Taylor, who, in 1901, became the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor, a widow, is traveling back East when robbers board her train and steal her life’s savings. Desperate, Annie listens when carnies in her boardinghouse suggest she perform “a stunt no one has ever survived” and make money telling her story, perhaps at the upcoming Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The location suggests Niagara Falls, so Annie uses her mathematical and engineering know-how to calculate the best odds for going over. She commissions a barrel with the right characteristics, gets a talent agent to represent her, and dyes her graying hair daredevil red. But it’s not that simple, as Annie discovers when she gets to Niagara and becomes a pawn of shady businessmen hoping to cash in on her stunt, offering “protection” in return. Annie makes a deal with Mr. Stilwell, an experienced riverman, who shows her how to avoid the whirlpool and takes her on a tour. They share an attraction to each other and the falls. But after her famous stunt, Annie must leave Niagara to make a living. Will he follow when the falls “are his oxygen and without them he will smother”? In her debut novel, playwright Morin ably portrays the cruelty that’s allied with hucksterism, from unfortunate animals sent over the falls to onlookers’ hopes of observing tragedy. Annie’s careful preparations for her stunt—designing the barrel, scouting the location—make engrossing reading. Several first-person, present-tense points of view, including those of a tough bodyguard and a ghost, contribute to the story’s immediacy and drama, but the voices are very similar and sometimes implausibly lyrical. “The deaths of the sad and the foolish keep the local tramps in hard liquor and old flowers,” muses Stilwell, so rough around the edges that he lives in a cave.
Looks beneath a famous stunt’s sensationalism to discover its roots in tragedy and need.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948133-01-2
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Po84 Productions
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2019
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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