Written like a storyboard and riddled with coincidences.
A Neapolitan policeman goes to war in New York with the American branch of his hometown crime family, in the latest from the Law & Order writer/producer (Street Boys, 2002, etc.).
When Giancarlo LoManto was 15, his father died in the Bronx at the hands of the Camorra, the tougher-than-the-Mafia criminal outfit born under the Bourbons in 18th-century Naples. The late Sig. LoManto had failed to pay the vig and, well, you know how it is. Giancarlo’s mamma, understandably bitter, took her son back to the old country, where he grew up to be a spectacularly successful cop with a mission: to rid the world of the Camorra. He was actually doing pretty well, picking off drug dealers right and left, ducking most of the bullets that came his way, until, just as he was getting ready for a well-deserved, long-deferred holiday on Capri, his sister turns up with bad news. Her daughter Paula, Giancarlo’s high-school age niece, has gone missing, kidnapped from the New York family she was visiting. Giancarlo knows instantly that the kidnapping is a ploy instigated by Don Pietro Rossi, capo of the New York branch of the Camorra and son of the man who offed Giancarlo’s poor late father. Giancarlo has been much too successful in his one-man war on the Rossis, and the handsome young Don is seriously pissed. Flying immediately to New York, Giancarlo is teamed by a high-level cop friend, beautiful up-and-coming second-generation detective Jennifer Fabini, with whom he begins the hunt for Paula that will lead inevitably to a face-off with Pete Rossi. The adventure will bring memories of old grudges, scenes of old evils, much outwitting of lower-level thugs, and a sweet relationship with a savvy homeless Latino lad. There will also be Important Revelations about the shared past of the two antagonists.
Written like a storyboard and riddled with coincidences.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-41097-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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