Bleak, stately, terrifying, and moving: It's not just the wonderful story and completely original, perfectly American...
A handsome young psychopath begins a spree of train robbery and murder in the West Texas border country, and the victimized railroad hires the legendary Ranger Captain Woodrow Call, aging hero of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, to stop him.
Gabby, funny Gus McCrae is in his grave, but years later other veterans of McMurty's epic cattle drive live on. Woodrow Call is nearly an old man, still maintaining his reputation as the greatest manhunter in the West. Living nearby, Pea-Eye, Call's old corporal, is a farmer married to Lorena, the gracefully fading beauty who once worked as a prostitute. Pea-Eye and Lorena, the only teacher at the little local school, have five children. Captain Call's final manhunt begins with orders from Colonel Terry, president of the railroad whose trains have been knocked off and passengers murdered by coldblooded Joey Garza. Call summons Pea-Eye to ride with him as he has always done, but Pea-Eye, who almost desperately loves his farm and family and who is beginning to feel his age, refuses the Captain for the first time in his life, and Call has to begin his hunt with no help other than that of Mr. Brookshire—the Brooklyn accountant Col. Terry sent to mind his money. The manhunt is almost immediately complicated by the return of Mox Mox, a murderous pervert who likes to torture and burn his victims. Mox Mox is working the same territory as Joey Garza, a beat also patrolled by the gunslinger John Wesley Harding. It's really more than Call can handle, no matter how quickly the terrified Mr. Brookshire loses his city-bred helplessness. As Call slowly tracks Garza, Maria (Garza's mother) sets out to save her son; a guilt-ridden Pea-Eye finally rides off to join his old boss; and Lorena follows her husband. Everybody who survives winds up in Joey's hometown for the showdown.
Bleak, stately, terrifying, and moving: It's not just the wonderful story and completely original, perfectly American characters; McMurtry writes as well about aging as has ever been done.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-79281-4
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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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