Succeeds when it’s silly, fails when it attempts dramatic weight.
Deliciously funny, if uneven sixth novel by Wickham (The Gatecrasher, 2000, etc.) follows three young British career women, just girlfriends at heart, as they bond, break-up, and come happily together again through tumultuous life changes.
Candice Brewin, Roxanne Miller, and Maggie Phillips, who toil together in the editorial offices of an upscale magazine, the Londoner, meet for drinks on the first of every month. Witty and wicked, each of these charmers has a distinctive persona and a personal problem. Goodhearted Candice is the writer, laboring under the revelation that her father (after his sudden death in a car crash) was a con man, a fraud, and a cad. Roxanne is the tough, hard-drinking broad who eschews sentimentality, works freelance on travel pieces, and has been carrying on a six-year affair with “Mr. Married with Kids,” whose identity she keeps secret from even her closest friends. Maggie, the magazine’s high-powered editor, is nine months pregnant, married to a millionaire, and about to leave London for the life of a country matron, “making coffee for a series of new, vibrant friends with cute babies dressed in designer clothes.” At first, these personable and empathetic protagonists seem in control and on top. But Maggie soon finds life outside the city dreary and lonely. Then Roxanne’s lover, who turns out to be Londoner’s publisher, sends her into a tailspin when he cuts her loose without telling her he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Meanwhile, Candice runs into Heather Trelawney, a schoolmate whose family lost everything because of Candice’s father. Trying to make amends, Candice takes the girl under her wing and sets in motion a familiar but still terrifying scenario in which Heather systematically sets out to ruin Candice’s life. The friends lose patience with themselves, and each other, as misunderstandings abound and good intentions go astray.
Succeeds when it’s silly, fails when it attempts dramatic weight.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28192-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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