Nonfiction author Sheimo’s (Stock Market Rules, 2012, etc.) first novel tracks a traveler’s motorcycle journey from Alaska to Minnesota on the treacherous Alcan Highway in the summer of 1970.
It doesn’t take much to convince Dan Johnson to embark on an adventure—just a couple of bucks. When his pal Jim loses a bet that he’d be the last to get married, Dan buys his first motorcycle and decides to go on a 3,000-mile journey to collect his $5 winnings and attend Jim’s wedding. Plus, he has a hunch his old flame Elaine might be there, which certainly sweetens the deal. Dan has only 10 days to travel from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Minneapolis on the Alcan Highway, a rugged and sometimes desolate route that could pose problems for an inexperienced motorcyclist. But Dan forges ahead, insisting, “[T]his might be my last chance to do something like this. At twenty-three years old, obligations will catch up to me.” The novel has an intriguing premise, and it may give motorcycle enthusiasts a nostalgia kick. However, the stiff, boilerplate dialogue quickly gives the odyssey a predictable, movie-of-the-week feel. Whether he’s battling angry bears, getting hassled by the border patrol or trying to save an out-of-control trucker, Dan always narrowly escapes injury, like James Bond or Indiana Jones. But unfortunately, Dan isn’t as interesting a character as those adventurers. Instead of requesting shaken martinis, Dan thinks about his preferred peanut-butter thickness on sandwiches (“one-half inch, a gourmet technique he learned a few years ago from his younger sister Anne”) and touts the benefits of “eyeball steaming”—that is, pressing his eye sockets against a hot coffee cup. Sheimo states in the acknowledgements that he actually traveled the Alcan Highway by motorcycle in 1970, but despite his firsthand knowledge of the terrain, the novel just doesn’t feel authentic enough to be completely believable. Instead, readers are left alone with the thinly sketched protagonist as he attempts to beat the odds, which seem always to be tipped in his favor.
A road trip that doesn’t feel dangerous or realistic enough to become a fully engaging adventure.
Pub Date: June 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499173512
Page Count: 198
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
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