TIJUANA STRAITS

Name: TIJUANA STRAITS
Author: Kem Nunn
ISBN: 0-684-84305-6

by Kem Nunn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 2004

Uneven: the violence is tainted by lurid excess, but the relationship between Sam and Magdalena is quite touching and not...

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Hands across the border: In this odd couple story, a Mexican woman fleeing for her life is sheltered by a reclusive Californian while the bad guys hover.

Dawn in the sand dunes, on the US side of the fence. Sam Fahey is out tracking some wild dogs when a young Mexican woman, badly beaten, collapses at his feet. An unlikely Good Samaritan, Sam takes her to his trailer. Now the backstory, taking us to the novel’s halfway point. Sam is a worm farmer, a grizzled loner. He inherited his small property near the border from his hateful, homicidal father. His glory years were his teens, when a legendary surfer (and surrogate father) taught him how to ride the swells. After that it was all downhill: drug-running and jail time. Now he barely gets by, popping pills, guzzling beer, suffering panic attacks away from home. As for the Mexican, 23-year-old Magdalena works for an attorney in Tijuana, building a case against a major US polluter. (This storyline goes nowhere, though Nunn [The Dogs of Winter, 1997, etc.] doesn’t let us forget the polluted landscape.) She also volunteers at an abortion clinic, which brings us to her assailant Armando, who has tried to kill Magdalena in revenge for her helping his abused wife to abort their child. After all this set-up, the story’s second half shows the strengthening bond between Sam, whom we know inside-out, and the fuzzily sketched Magdalena. Armando and his henchmen cross the border to hunt her down. A long chase sequence with random killings is not lean enough to qualify as suspense. The villains are dispatched, and Sam, rehabilitated by the influence of a good woman, finds the strength to rescue six illegals from the pounding surf and to ascend the Mystic Peak, mother of all waves.

Uneven: the violence is tainted by lurid excess, but the relationship between Sam and Magdalena is quite touching and not overdone.

Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2004

ISBN: 0-684-84305-6

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CHANCE
by Kem Nunn

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POMONA QUEEN
by Kem Nunn

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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...

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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

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.

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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.