The book’s heart seems like it’s in the right place, but the muddle of plot and character makes it hard to get behind.
An ailing anti-government radical plots to reunite with two sisters he loved in childhood.
As girls in Cooper County, West Virginia, Dinah and Grace were left largely to raise themselves as their mentally ill mother was institutionalized and their alcoholic father took up with a wealthy widow. When the sisters come to the aid of Richie, the widow’s bullied son, he becomes infatuated with them, especially the elder sister, Dinah. Written in nonlinear chapters that alternate among Dinah's, Grace's, and Richie’s perspectives, the book recounts the trio’s adolescence, when Richie becomes an Ayn Rand devotee, a calculating entrepreneur (he sells drugs at school), and, most chillingly, a sexual opportunist, assaulting Dinah when she is unconscious one afternoon. Now, in middle age, Dinah is married to one of Richie’s old associates, Ray, and has moved away. Though Dinah and Ray are newly committed to Jesus and raising five children, Richie makes Ray one last offer of work to lure Dinah close. Grace, who still lives in West Virginia and is struggling with depression, anxiously anticipates Dinah’s homecoming. Willis (A Space Apart, 2017, etc.) has written a timely story, especially given that Appalachia was thrust into the spotlight after the 2016 presidential elections by books like Hillbilly Elegy. Willis’ Appalachia is a mixture of well-intentioned but ineffectual liberals, born-again Christians, and would-be domestic terrorists—all the ingredients for a potentially fast-paced drama. But even readers with a high tolerance for time and perspective shifts will struggle to put the narrative pieces together here. And the novel’s biggest ask may be that the reader have sympathy for—and buy into the possible redemption of—a fascistic narcissist like Richie.
The book’s heart seems like it’s in the right place, but the muddle of plot and character makes it hard to get behind.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946684-34-9
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Vandalia Press/West Virginia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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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