Written on ice cubes in 86-proof ink. Quite amusing. And as perishable as the rock classics Pete reveres.
This time out, Lindquist (Carnival Desires, 1990, etc.) gives us Jane Austen in reverse.
Ex-grunge star Pete Tyler’s Seattle rock band fell apart eight years ago, and since then he’s become a lawyer. Now, at 36 and after sex with some 300 women, he wants to marry. Like the deal-making screenwriter in Carnival who wanted to leave the scene after too many “club sluts,” wifeless Pete floats through his days on raw unfiltered Camels and shots of Johnnie Walker while fearing the fast approach of age 40. Women still see some glamour, but not much, in the rock-star manqué, while at the moment Pete’s become page-one news in Seattle for prosecuting local rock guitarist Keith Johnson, a.k.a. Keith Junior, for the date rape of 19-year-old Amber Nickerson. Seattle is famed for its pickup rock bands, and Pete is still up to his follicles in rock, measuring every minute of the day against tunes and lyrics finely detailed throughout the story. He longs for the girl who got away 12 years ago, Beth Keller, whom he hasn’t seen since. He’s deep with a stripper named Winter, bright but not exactly marrying stuff, and has just taken up with Sub Pop A&R executive Esmé, to whose label Keith is signed. The novel’s big lift doesn’t come until Pete’s heavy-drinking assistant prosecutor, Scott, enters and starts spouting first-rate cynical witticisms like a Seattle Oscar Wilde: “The whole retro thing. You might be on the cutting edge with this marriage idea. It’s making a comeback . . . —marriage, adultery, promiscuity, alcoholism, Sinatra, the things that made this a great country.” And so Pete staggers in search of “the curative sensation of human contact” and “the redemptive power of passion.” Fruitlessly.
Written on ice cubes in 86-proof ink. Quite amusing. And as perishable as the rock classics Pete reveres.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-46302-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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