What does it all mean? Hard to say. Dull prose and self-absorbed heroine are just plain irritating.
Whiny sequel to the kvetchy What She Saw . . . (2000).
A decade after her college years, Phoebe Fine is still not happy—the not-so-burning question is, Why not? Raise your hand if you care. Okay, don’t. It’s all the same to Phoebe, who moves back to Whitehead, New Jersey, six miles southeast of Paramus, to be with her parents, for lots of reasons. She hates her job. Her apartment is depressing. Her last relationship tanked. Therapy isn’t helping. Her friends are married. She doesn’t want to succeed at anything. She drinks like a fish. She doesn’t want to live in New York anymore. She has nightmares about giant cockroaches. Her mother, a classical violist, has cancer. Roberta Fine uses the “c-word” to avoid talking about the “d-word,” but it’s clear that the older woman is gravely ill—and that auburn wig with short bangs she has to wear is so awful Phoebe just can’t stand it. She can remember when her mother’s long, hippie-style hair was, like, so embarrassing, and now poor old mom doesn’t have any. How ironic, thinks Phoebe, who is big on solipsistic musing. And her dad is daffier than ever, an occupational hazard of professional oboists, who are said to literally blow their brains out. Being with her parents is driving her crazy. Hanging out downtown with the fabulous, the desperate, and everyone in between isn’t much better, but she does have a slightly higher chance of getting laid. A swain appears: Stinky Mancuso, back from Novel #1, is alive and well and living under a Frenchified name. How uncool. An epiphany of sorts awaits: Phoebe realizes she didn’t move back home to take care of her mother, she moved back home to have her mother take care of her. A non sequitur is tossed in to liven up the dragging plot: Her mother’s cherished viola turns out to be a Guarneri.
What does it all mean? Hard to say. Dull prose and self-absorbed heroine are just plain irritating.Pub Date: March 9, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6185-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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