THE PRESENT MOMENT

Name: THE PRESENT MOMENT
Author: Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye
ISBN: 1-55861-254-8

by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2000

Memories are shared and friendships strengthened in a story that suffers from trying to be a history of both Kenya and the...

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In her second novel to be published in the Women Writing Africa series (see above), Kenyan writer Macgoye spins an intermittently moving, if often didactic, tale.

Here, seven elderly women recall their lives during a period of great change. All seven, members of different tribes and faiths, live in the Refuge, a church-run shelter for the impoverished old and ailing. Like a chorus, their individual voices join to carry a common refrain—a plaint about their present condition—and then separate to resume their own stories, which in turn are interrupted by the others. All have had hard lives, and all have been affected by such political events in Kenya as the Mau Mau revolt against the British, independence, and the short-lived revolution of the 1960s. Bessie lives in the past now as she mourns her only son, a deserter who was seized by soldiers during the military revolt and shot dead in front of her. Light-skinned Mama Chungu recalls how she became the servant, then the mistress, of a white man. Nekesa, a former prostitute, relates how she lost the only surviving member of her family, a brother who had been a soldier in WWII but afterward turned to drink. The ailing Rahel is a soldier’s widow; Priscilla once worked for a white woman whose family was killed by the Mau Mau in Priscilla’s presence; and Sophia, a Moslem, accidentally caused a fire that killed members of her own family. The most interesting and vivid personality is Wairimu, who was determined to make her own way after she was seduced: she left home, worked at various jobs, and became involved in politics as she organized her fellow workers and protested continuing British rule.

Memories are shared and friendships strengthened in a story that suffers from trying to be a history of both Kenya and the old women.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000

ISBN: 1-55861-254-8

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Feminist Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000

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.