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CYCLES

Name: CYCLES
Author: Maria de Andrade
ISBN: 978-1-4602-9716-2

by Maria de Andrade ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 13, 2016

Dramatically light, but historically and sociologically interesting.

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From Lisbon to Montreal, De Andrade’s (The Little Sect, 2015, etc.) second novel follows the lives of Marta and Tiago Sousa, a young Portuguese couple who stake their hopes for better opportunities on a move to Canada.

In April of 1974, the fascist government of Portugal that had ruled for almost 50 years was overthrown in a one-day military coup that was known as the Carnation Revolution. It’s on the morning of this revolution that we meet Marta and Tiago, both 24 years old, three-months married, and about to move into a new apartment just outside Lisbon. Marta works in the Lisbon office of SKF, a Swedish company, and Tiago is a mechanic for Auto Europa. Tiago has longed to move to Canada, where he believes that greater chances await for advancement and he can one day run his own auto-repair business. But Marta is pregnant, and the revolution bodes well for their future. They decide to remain close to family and friends, and the first half of the novel depicts the early, Lisbon years of their marriage. In 1979, Tiago is restless, and they agree to move to Montreal with their 4-year old son, Paulo, and start over. What follows is an immigrant’s tale—the hope, the fear, the challenges of learning to be part of a new cultural milieu, not to mention the need to become fluent in two new languages, English and French. The third-person narrative centers around Marta and concentrates on her family relationships and workplace experiences. She obtains employment with a shoe company, S & K Imports, and remains there for 30 years, until her retirement. This focus on her office life—in Lisbon and in Montreal—gives De Andrade the opportunity to explore differences between multicultural French Canada and homogeneous Portugal in terms of social norms, employee environments, and political institutions. There are sporadic grammatical stumbling blocks (“Tiago made sure to have Marta sat by his side.”), but the text is informative, if not quite passionate.

Dramatically light, but historically and sociologically interesting.

Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4602-9716-2

Page Count: -

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.