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KICKING

Name: KICKING
Author: Leslie Dick
ISBN: 0-87286-282-8

by Leslie Dick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1993

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Dick's second novel (after Without Falling, 1988—not reviewed) begins with a clever nouvelle roman flourish but soon finds its own level as a pretentious, stilted melodrama set in the so-called art worlds of London and New York in the Eighties. Told from the perspective of a neurasthenic young art critic named Connie, this self-consciously cinematic narrative concerns an on-again, off-again love triangle that can't sustain the weight of such belabored analysis. The opening scene, in which Connie witnesses a suicide, provides an interesting exercise in context and perspective but finally has little to do with the main story. Jumping back and forth through time, Connie meditates on her friendship with artists Michael and Ruby, her friends since they were all so young, and pretty and brilliant, according to Connie. What they say and do and create, however, suggests a trio of sexually promiscuous, politically shallow, and artistically lame characters more concerned with acting like artists than producing anything of real value. Brooding Michael is given to excess (he takes lots of heroin) and says things like ``God, it's all so fucking bourgeois.'' Ruby, a fellow Brit, also walks on the wild side and espouses revolutionary chic ideology. Connie, herself ``succumbed to ennui,'' romances death but doesn't take as many drugs—she reads Sylvia Plath instead. Half-American, she too has everything paid for by Mummy and Daddy. Her experience of art is hardly hypercritical (``She was knocked out by the Warhol''), and her reflections on her relationships are surprisingly girlish. An extended episode about a $500 debt suggests that Connie might be even crazier than she or her creator realizes. Imagine Tama Janowitz's ``art scene'' without even an attempt at humor, and you begin to get the silly solemnity of this self- mythologizing novel whose main characters are an annoying, whiny bunch of poseurs.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-87286-282-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: City Lights

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.