The struggles of the proudly eccentric family of a once-famous poet who's committed suicide lie at the heart of this kaleidoscopic comedy, which dazzlingly illuminates the exact moment when the '60s disintegrated into terminal narcissism and gave birth to today's entropic culture. Jones (Particles and Luck, 1993, etc.) spins out an audacious plot focusing on a pivotal four days in 1973 when the children of James Farmican, a beatnik who blew his brains out three years earlier, are finally compelled to give up their father's decaying labyrinth of a Victorian mansion. ``California's over,'' says their beautiful self-absorbed mother, Julia, now married to psychiatrist Faro Ness, whose oozing '60s sensitivity can't hide the fact that he has seized almost all of the family's assets. Two children, Peter and Wendy, are casualties of too much Peter Pan whimsy; their long-lost brother Ed, given up for adoption to a ``normal'' family, has arrived to claim his inheritance. Observing all this is Steve, the callow 17-year-old who had been hired to clean out the house. Falling (naturally) under their spell, the interloper has already managed to impregnate Wendy; he follows her and her siblings to Nevada, where Ed wants to resurrect his father's shuttered Cornucopia Casino. Writing 20 years later, Steve describes how Peter gambled himself into debt to gangsters, and how Wendy let a Christian cardsharp convince her that she could pay off her brother's debt (and save her unborn child) by serving clients in the Ecstacy Ranch brothel. The novel circles around to Steve's account of meeting Wendy again after 20 years, the two reuniting not because she loves him, but because she needs him to pose as her husband in order to contest Faro Ness's control over the now sizable estate. Jones performs an act of alchemy here, burnishing the bitter and petty betrayals of an era with a lyrical anguish that makes Steve's aching regret feel universal. (First printing of 25,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-42334-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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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