A would-be writer finds cancer instead of a publisher in New York; she goes back to Alabama to die, but storywriter and anthologist Ebersole (Mondo Barbie, 1993, etc.) keeps her character alive long enough to inject a few poignant anecdotes into this otherwise maudlin first novel. Embodying the modern belief that only in many voices can one find truth, dying Cordelia takes shape through her conscious, her unconscious, and her self-specific omniscient narrator (``Without Cordelia, I cease to be omniscient''), making a desperate effort to tell all she knows. As the seventh (and last) of the name Cordelia in her family to die in the small town of Equality, she is part of a rich matrilineal heritage, the possessor of her predecessors' memories as well as of her own. But she is also the end of her line. Not inappropriately, most of her recollections concern other deaths: the brave, proud black woman Cora Johnson, visited on her deathbed by the now-famous writer Jane, whom Cora rescued from her white-trash family and inspired to become a storyteller; Adam, a bright young boy who learns about fireworks from the town's only Chinaman, then blows himself up within a few days of his mother's giving him his first chemistry set; bored young Mary Elizabeth, who drags a sister and her friend to see the local psychic: The old woman refuses to tell Mary Elizabeth about her future, sensing that the young woman will soon die. Intermixed with these tales of woe are Cordelia's brief encounters with the living: her visiting nurse, dispensing painkillers and geography quizzes; old Doc Campbell, himself dying of cancer; and her ex-lover from New York, who followed her home against her wishes only to sit helplessly by as she fades away. Engaging character sketches in the time-honored tradition of southern gothic, although the more contemporary conceit that binds them here is loose and ineffectual.
Pub Date: March 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15106-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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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