Though presented as a mystery, this vivid tale employs mysticism, Catholicism, and murder to tell the story of a shining...
Haunted by dreams of a possible past life, a recovering alcoholic attempts to find her best friend’s killer in this debut novel.
Cassandra “Cass” DiSpirito and Gabriella “Kit” Labastiani have always been fun-loving North Shore girls, raised just outside of Boston and usually found at their favorite coastal bar, The Outrigger—which they, not always so affectionately, call “The Frig.” Cass’ life tragically ends there, as she is discovered beaten and strangled on The Frig’s roof, and Kit, using her skills as a journalist, vows to find her killer. Kit spends her days investigating her friend’s untimely demise, while her nights are filled with strange dreams of Germany in the 1600s, about a charitable country healer named Anke and her persecution by the church as a witch. Counter to Kit’s Roman Catholic upbringing and urged on by her grief, she comes to believe these dreams are the manifestations of past lives, the figures in them earlier incarnations of friends and family, their modern actions—and Cass’ murder—a karmic continuation of events long ago. Through them, Kit sobers up and comes to some level of acceptance and understanding about Cass’ death, even when faced with her killer. Campbell’s book builds on the culture of one of America’s oldest cities, the characters so wonderfully Bostonian that anyone with even a passing knowledge of the metropolis should find them instantly recognizable. The portrayal of Kit’s family, half-Italian, half-Irish, plays with the idiosyncrasies of both heritages with a decidedly un–PC and self-effacing sense of humor. Much of the book explores Kit and Cass’ friendship, beginning in the 1950s and ’60s, traveling with them throughout their years of terrorizing nuns in parochial school to eventually graduating to barhopping and burning gas from Boston to Ipswich. The girls come to life on the page, Kit slightly more well-behaved and intuitive, Cass more capricious and fashion-conscious, each smile-inducing detail of their love further driving home the tragedy of Cass’ death. Kit’s dreams, whether a former life or just a means to cope with her loss, further expand upon the novel’s themes of how vibrant and powerful women are viewed, the unjust and violent retribution they often draw, as well as the shortcomings of the church.
Though presented as a mystery, this vivid tale employs mysticism, Catholicism, and murder to tell the story of a shining friendship.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7414-9949-3
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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