A slightly contrived but ultimately enjoyable thriller set in the shadowy world of medical experimentation.
An American expatriate in Thailand stumbles on a doctor’s bizarre genetic experiments in this debut novel.
After widower Benton Sims retired from his career as a Washington, D.C., intelligence analyst, he decided to move to Thailand. He spends his days hanging around the expat pub in Prajawan, drinking margaritas, swapping stories with the local transplants, and pining for his dead wife, Sylvia. There, he watches Siri perform; she’s the frontwoman of the Exploding Heads who hails from a tribal village in the Golden Triangle. Then, out of the blue, Siri disappears. Benton learns the rock singer had been a critic of the drug trials conducted among her people, the marginalized Palin, and that this has forced her to go underground. Benton seeks out Pierre Montha Bulsani, the physician who conducted the trials, but he unwittingly becomes a test subject himself. As the drugs begin to change Benton in strange and unexpected ways, he is drawn ever deeper into Pierre’s mysterious realm, where dead people turn out to be alive, the living are in danger of becoming dead, and the full, terrible potential of Thailand’s hidden plants may unlock the ancient, untapped potential of humanity. So much for a quiet retirement on the beach. Mani tells his story in taut, highly descriptive prose, capturing his Thai setting’s cornucopia of sights and tastes: One character sees “clusters of pimpled red lichees whose insides he remembered as soft and translucent, tangy-sweet and throat-tickling, and next to them were their scrumptious cousins the dumpling-like longans, and then bunches of thorny rambutans, their flavor acrid like over-ripened grapes.” The players are given elaborate backstories, and the thriller’s interests are varied and ambitious. Even so, the plot feels a bit shapeless at times, as though the author is trying to cram a lot of distinct components into one slightly cumbersome structure. But fans of more literary-tinged genre offerings like those of Chris Abani or John le Carré will enjoy Benton’s strange—even phantasmagoric—adventures in Thailand. Replete with questions regarding medical ethics and technologies, the book serves as the first volume of a trilogy.
A slightly contrived but ultimately enjoyable thriller set in the shadowy world of medical experimentation.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-950743-10-0
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Calumet Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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