Born-and-bred southerner Jones, author of six previous novels (Last Things, 1989, etc.), imparts an authentic redneck flavor to this way overplotted but nonetheless amusing tale of one family's woes and ultimate downfall in the Appalachian foothills. It's the 1950s, and just outside Riverton, in eastern Tennessee, the Moss family is trying to make ends meet—or at least some of them are. Partly the trouble is that everyone for miles around sees the family as worthless white trash; partly it's also that out of them all—Mama, Daddy, and the eight kids—only Mama, Eve, Coop, and Chester (who narrates) have any sense at all. Daddy's a dimwit and full of lame-brained, money-making schemes; Dud and Stack are lumbering fools; Mabel and Dorcas have hardly a brain between them; and Bucky is in fact brain-damaged (though he's the only one of the Moss men who earns any money). Chester wants more out of life for himself and his siblings, as do Coop and Mama, but clearly the cards are stacked against them. Then, after long- lost Uncle Clarence shows up and is promptly murdered by the relentless Sheriff Tipps (whose hatred of the Moss family is never fully explained), an even steeper downward spiral of trouble begins. Dorcas, the only beautiful Moss sister, falls in with the wrong crowd and ends up pregnant; Stack becomes an example at the evil hand of Tipps; and even Coop winds up in big trouble when the death of the fortune-teller Madame Shula is pinned firmly on him. By the time the Moss family lose their farm, even Chester's hopes have dwindled, and the story ends with a whimper as the surviving Mosses either move into a dismal trailer or flee the scene. Jones manages to make what could be just another quirky-white- trash-characters assembly-line output into a flawed but often funny novel worth reading for laughs, if not enlightenment.
Pub Date: May 21, 1996
ISBN: 1-56352-278-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Longstreet
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
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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