Possibly a roman á clef, but the clef probably fits any number of doors. Entertaining if a little long-winded.
Fresh young associates and cynical old partners do battle with shifty prosecuting attorneys, soulless corporations, treacherous families and each other, in an issue-packed first novel from a young, famously monikered Penn law professor.
Skillfully pitching to the latest generation of young lawyers now facing the shock of the law in practice v. the law in school and wondering whether the career will be worth the huge student loan, Roosevelt sets a brood of Ivy-educated fledglings in a richly feathered nest on K Street. Earnest, sleep-deprived Mark Clayton, equally earnest distance-running Katja Phillips, terminally shallow Ryan Grady and former Supreme clerk Walker Eliot have begun their careers at D.C. power firm Morgan Siler, pulling down six-figure salaries but, with the exception of superstar Walker, nearly collapsing under odious and endless assignments. The firm is girding for battle in the defense of a careless Texas chemical firm against a class action suit featuring a shocking number of dead low-wage workers, and the young associates must learn the ins and outs of the corporate shell game crafted by Morgan Siler to insulate the chemical company from just such pesky problems. Glamour boy Walker, meanwhile, has saddled poor Mark with the pro bono defense of a soon-to-be-executed Virginian whose family seems a little too easily resigned to the man’s fate. Alternating trips to the Texas Chernobyl, where the locals despise the Washingtonians and the only motel is a dump, with drives to Norfolk, where the executioner’s clock is ticking but the hotel is luxe, Mark begins to piece together the alleged murderer’s defense. Meantime, Katja works her way through boxes of documents until she accidentally stumbles on unpleasant truths about the toxic fire, unaware that she is becoming ever dearer to the heart of a clever but lonely and much older litigator. And at the top of the heap, the stuffed-shirt son of the firm’s founder ponders the idea of a trophy wife.
Possibly a roman á clef, but the clef probably fits any number of doors. Entertaining if a little long-winded.Pub Date: June 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-26187-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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