A messy family tale with a clever idea and often sensitive writing.
A debut novel about three generations of a family offers a lot of sadness and pain but also plenty of love and acceptance.
Raymond Chandler (yes, named for the famous crime novelist) is not just old and frail, but coping with lung cancer as well. His wife, Joanne, is dead and he lives with his daughter, Cassie, who has her own problems, including her sullen teenage son, Joey. The story takes place over a single day, beginning with Ray’s painfully slow process of becoming awake and shuffling to breakfast. On this day, he sees a physician, learns that he is dying, and slips away from the doctor’s office to begin a journey of which he is only vaguely aware. Meanwhile, Joey, suspended for fighting in school, confesses to Cassie that he is gender fluid. Readers also learn about Cassie’s bad marriages and that she is prone to psychotic breaks, and Ray’s past as a farmer and what happened to his son, Joe. Ray encounters a variety of people, including a very protective orderly; a helpful Girl Scout; a chubby, curious baby; and a veteran with PTSD. He learns from them all, and they inadvertently give him gifts: real, material gifts. The book finally springs a few big surprises, some shocking and some poignant. Suffice it to say, that some of the characters are very much better off at day’s end. Catharsis has done the good that it has worked ever since the Greeks came up with the idea. As the back cover summary notes, this tale alludes not just to Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man,” but also to The Odyssey. Not Homer’s so much as James Joyce’s Ulysses, which tracks Leopold Bloom on his meanderings through Dublin on that fateful 16th of June, 1904, a trek that the Joycean faithful still celebrate as Bloomsday. Renken delivers a wonderfully inventive idea, just close enough to Joyce, Homer, and Shakespeare without devolving into a parlor game (And Joey would be who?). The pacing, too, is admirable, from the very first chapter with Ray’s reluctantly leaving sleep and orienting himself to the frazzled Cassie. She is trying to hold things together as she struggles to make breakfast while getting senile Ray and sullen Joey into gear for the day. Clearly, the woman has more on her plate than anyone deserves. Often, the author finds a striking phrase or word (“Time traveled out in front of” Ray; the swishing windshield wipers as the “heartbeat” of Cassie’s car). More’s the pity, then, that the moving novel is marred by such things as confounding tense switches (“But she doesn’t know where her son was”; “Raymond does not turn to look at them but heard them”). A strong editor was needed. Early on, readers will find Joey “putting both his head in his hands.” And especially as they near the end of the story, the typos come thick and fast (sheer, not “shear”; moved, not “loved”; Joey, not “Jory”).
A messy family tale with a clever idea and often sensitive writing.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-71029-817-8
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
