A savage, often unfunny and unfocused adieu to sex—at least as it's practiced in the "permissive society." Jake is a 59-year-old Oxford don (ancient Mediterranean history), and his "thing" is his penis, which has been failing him lately with fat wife Brenda. This problem takes him into the world of flaky psychotherapy. . . and pictorial pornography—since one of the measures recommended by smarmy, boyishly Irish Dr. Rosenberg is the study of dirty pictures "on at least three occasions for a minimum of fifteen minutes at a time. See that this leads to masturbation at least once, preferably twice." Jake finds today's gross porn thoroughly un-erotic; nor is he stimulated much by the rest of Dr. Rosenberg's therapeutic program: "nongenital sensate-focusing," writing out sex fantasies, monitoring sleep-time erections with a "nocturnal mensurator," and enduring the talky-touchy-feely of a "Workshop" encounter group. ("If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's 'Workshop.' After 'Youth,' that is.") But Jake does soon find himself fully functional one surprising night up at Oxford—with an old flame who, though she inspires his quasi-lust, is otherwise a total disappointment: "I mistook her egotism for sparkle. . . her cheap jeering for healthy disrespect. . . ." In fact, Jake realizes how little he cares for women in general—Oxford is being picketed by feminists, Jake's wife takes off with a fatuous friend; and, when Jake's problem is at last diagnosed correctly (a treatable hormone problem), he does a run-down on female foulness and decides to leave well enough alone and remain contentedly impotent. Does all this work—as satire, character comedy, or polemic? Not really. Because Amis' primary targets are a bit dated (in the U.S. anyway) and obvious. Became Jake is an inconsistent alter ego, sometimes a clear mouthpiece (in tirades on today's sexual mores), sometimes a bit of a cartoon himself (in his self-proclaimed chauvinist-pigdom). And because Amis' shot-gun contempt—for illiterate students, bad cafeteria food, etc.—keeps pulling the whole book down to a level of unfocused tetchiness. The Amis prose glitters throughout as shark-toothily as ever, but the Amis bile isn't the geyser it once was-more like a leaky faucet.
Pub Date: June 26, 1980
ISBN: 0140050965
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1979
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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