In a voice uncompromisingly tough, without the witty charm or sugarcoating of so much contemporary female-driven fiction,...
Irish poet and novelist Hardie (A Winter Marriage, 2002) digs deep into issues of morality and identity through the voice of a Protestant woman from Derry coming to terms with her inexplicable healing powers while living in Southern Ireland with her Catholic husband.
College student Ellen, daughter of a no-nonsense teacher, marries a conventional, working-class Protestant boy from Belfast. After their daughter dies at birth, Ellen foresees the death of an acquaintance and has a mental breakdown. Out of the hospital but still fragile within her marriage and her sanity, Ellen meets Liam, a sculptor and stonemason. Although she fights it, she recognizes he is her destiny. She leaves her husband and moves to Southern Ireland with Catholic Liam, whom she eventually marries. As much as she loves Liam and enjoys their life with their two children, his friends and his warm, accepting family, Ellen remains an outsider. Infused with the grittier, more violent energy of the Protestant North, she cannot accept the Catholic South’s soft ease. She is also painfully aware that she’s clairvoyant. Although part of Liam’s initial appeal lay in seeing that clairvoyance as a gift, not a sickness, she feels pressured by his embrace of her power. When he discovers Ellen can also heal by touching, Liam nudges her to cash in on it, and she reluctantly bends to his will. Her one friend is Catherine, an emotionally needy but appealing ex-nun who makes commercially popular pottery. When Ellen discovers Catherine’s brief affair with Liam, her life falls apart. Then she learns that her long-estranged mother is approaching death. Returning to the North, Ellen faces realities she has avoided, both about her family of origin and about the family she has created with Liam.
In a voice uncompromisingly tough, without the witty charm or sugarcoating of so much contemporary female-driven fiction, Hardie creates resonant characters unafraid to navigate through the contradictions inherent in every life.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2006
ISBN: 0-316-07623-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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