Jury duty in a murder trial helps resolve a classical musician's deep professional crisis—in a haunting second novel from the author of The Laughing Sutra (1990) and Iron and Silk (1986), Salzman's acclaimed book (and later movie) about China. Cellist Reinhart (Renne) Sundheimer, the son of German Jews who fled to America, was once a child prodigy. After the war, his mother returned to Germany so he could study with world-famous cellist Johannes von Kempen, who had retired from the orchestra rather than endure false charges of Nazi sympathies. The ancient maestro, with his inspirational dignity, became the most important person in young Renne's life, softening its loneliness (no playmates, no girlfriends). Then, tragedy: at 18, a conjectural hearing problem drove Renne from the concert stage. When Salzman's story begins, Renne is 34, a cello teacher at UCLA, still a virgin, still grimly determined to concertize again. Two events reshape his identity. He becomes deeply involved in teaching a new prodigy, Kyung-hee, a nine-year-old Korean-American, and he serves as a juror in the trial of a Zen student accused of murdering his master. Salzman skillfully interweaves flashbacks with the nurturing of Kyung-hee and the story of the trial and its offshoot, a budding romance between Renne and fellow-juror Maria-Teresa, an attractive married woman. Renne's insecurity with women snuffs out the romance; then he finds himself the lone holdout for a guilty- but-insane verdict and the object of his fellow-jurors' contempt. Yet the two traumas cause Renne's regeneration as musician and as moral being: he sees the trial as "his graduate recital" for his old master, while he serenely guides his young protege toward a brilliant future. Salzman's handling of his weighty theme—the passing of torches as the ennobling essence of civilization—is unfailingly light and delicate: this is lovely, offbeat movie material.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0679759263
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
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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