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A GIRL BECOMES A COMMA LIKE THAT

Name: A GIRL BECOMES A COMMA LIKE THAT
Author: Lisa Glatt
ISBN: 0-7432-5775-8

by Lisa Glatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2004

Heartfelt but poorly built.

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Women apparently looking for love turn out to want much more—or something.

Newcomer Glatt makes a valiant try to parse the reasons for her characters’ behaving foolishly, but she doesn’t come up with much more than the usual mental anguish of troubled love and misdirected lives. Although the tale portrays a few different women, the bulk of its energy goes to Rachel Spark, a 30-year-old college instructor and poet recently moved back in with her mother, who’s being treated for breast cancer. Rachel has a thing for taking random new lovers back to the apartment in order to placate the growing despair she feels over her mother’s condition. The root of her problem apparently stems from the “first wrong boy” she slept with at age 13, after which “something inside me hardened . . . a girl becomes a comma like that, with wrong boy after wrong boy; she becomes a pause, something quick before the real thing.” Other players include Ella, who works at the clinic where Rachel goes for an abortion after a one-night stand and who’s worried about losing her boyfriend to a co-worker; Georgia, a teenager who’s a chronic clinic visitor, smart in most ways but quite stupid when it comes to boys; and Angela, a mousy friend of Rachel’s who seems as bored with her as the author does. Taken by themselves, most of these women’s lives could be the material of good short fiction. Georgia, in particular, is fiery and purposeful, with an unapologetic edge and a grudge against pretty much everybody, but it’s not clear what purpose she serves here. Glatt’s interweaving of people and plots can sometimes hit a mark, mostly in allowing us to see her people from the inside and out, and she has a good feel for how one’s insecurities translate into risky behavior. But the whole thing skids off the road long before coming to any sort of conclusion.

Heartfelt but poorly built.

Pub Date: June 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-7432-5775-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NAKEDS
by Lisa Glatt

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THE APPLE’S BRUISE
by Lisa Glatt

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
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.