Herrin's fourth novel (The Unwritten Chronicles of Robert E. Lee, 1989, etc.): a quiet, sturdy account of a dying man's journey across the country to his deathbed, which happens to be the same bed where he was born. The author manages to turn the stuff of soap opera into a heartfelt mythical odyssey, occasionally a bit garrulous but mostly full of craft. Ed Reece, dying of lung cancer, telegraphs Larry, his estranged older son, nearly 40. Despite his wife and other children, despite a prosperous business, ``All I can say now,'' Ed tells Larry, ``is that it hasn't been enough.'' So he has Larry buy a van and off they go, without telling the family. While they travel through the Midwest on their way to Chumleyville, Alabama, where Ed was born, the two have many heart-to-hearts, and Larry, drifting until now, begins to apprehend the world: ``Death was like a solution that brought every speck of beauty out of the world around you, but that would not let you breathe, let you be.'' They visit Connie, Larry's ex-wife, who now lives in the country with Larry's two kids and her female lover. Connie is a no-nonsense woman (``We're the salt of the earth. We pull our weight out here''), and Ed convinces her to come along with grandson Jeff. After the usual road scenes—flashbacks, a van breakdown, cops (because Ed's wife is convinced that Larry ``kidnapped'' his father)—Connie and Larry are reconciled, then bargain (in an affecting tragicomic scene) with the owners of the house where Ed wants to die. Ed passes away after a vision, leaving his family- -Ed's wife and younger son are now on the scene as well—bereft but wiser. Herrin builds his novel the old-fashioned way, earning his effects with slice-of-life detail that makes the archetypal father- son journey credible and unboastful rather than literary or postmodernist.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1991
ISBN: 0-393-03010-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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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