The story of a sixtysomething woman's wished-for summer love affair—an affair that never quite comes to pass but does let author French (Our Father, 1994, etc.) enter a rich Alice Adamslike world of middle-aged social and romantic relationships, with verve. Divorced, sophisticated, cynical Fifth Avenue romance writer Elsa Schutz—known to her readers as Hermione Beldame, author of 87 bestselling titles—meets a dashing, slightly younger, seductive southern man at a party given by her friends, the Altshulers, on their magnificent estate. George Johnson is a bright-eyed, sandy- haired newspaper editor, currently unmarried, whiling away the summer at Columbia University. The sight of George makes Hermione's ``mind, or maybe my heart,'' stop, she admits—with lust and longing. Although she has been married four times (divorced twice, widowed twice) and has settled into a satisfying social whirl of concerts, plays, dinner parties, and foreign trips with her scores of accomplished women and married friends, most of them artists and writers, love is not yet through with Hermione, alas. At least when George asks her to lunch in the city, she begins furiously to fantasize that they'll spend the rest of their lives together. But George, unlike the characters in her books, is neither hero nor villain, exactly—he's ``a master of mixed signals'' who says he will call and doesn't, admires Hermione extravagantly and then never lays a finger on her. Finally, he goes home to Louisville. Meanwhile, stalwart Hermione has been remembering her girlhood and adolescence, sadly lacking in romance, and she's been discussing her feelings for her various husbands and George over fancy restaurant meals with her friends, many of whom have enlightening or hair-raising romantic stories of their own to tell. Thus Hermione learns to embrace a long and fairly triumphant life, while French tells us her opinion on everything from braised lamb shanks to the heart's undying longing for romantic love. A modest pleasure. (First printing of 50,000)
Pub Date: Aug. 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-44774-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
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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