A riveting character study even during its most appalling moments.
In McGovern’s dark debut thriller, a troubled man snaps and commits murder—again.
Aaron Walsh lives rent-free in Dublin with his mother, Mary, and younger sister, Rachel. He hates the idea of growing old, so he fantasizes about committing suicide or becoming a murder victim. His days generally start with Mary hounding him about housework, while unemployed Rachel does little other than stare at her smartphone. Things aren’t much better at Computer Heaven, the computer repair shop where Aaron listens to endless complaints from walk-ins. Surprisingly, he’s intrigued by one of the customers—a woman named Jane, who’s seemingly immune to Aaron’s excessive eye contact, which he says gives people the “heebie-jeebies.” He comes up with a plan to drop off Jane’s computer at her home, hoping that he can get himself invited inside, but things don’t go the way that he hoped. Instead, he succumbs to a violent outburst that turns homicidal. As it turns out, it isn’t the first time that he’s killed someone—and sadly, it won’t be the last. Although this story is often somber and grotesque, McGovern injects enough nuance to prevent it from being a mere blood bath. For example, he sporadically pulls away from Aaron’s first-person narrative to offer other characters’ perspectives. Most are posthumous, but they offer tender recollections that make them sympathetic, or they show how Aaron looks through another person’s eyes. There’s a drastic plot turn in the latter half of the novel that implies that Aaron is cracking up; it’s unclear if some or all of what’s happening is only in his head, but the ambiguity only makes things more intriguing. Overall, Aaron is an unsavory character, to be sure, but he sometimes has heartfelt flashes of insight: “Life is all one big trap and no one sees it because they are too busy playing along.”
A riveting character study even during its most appalling moments.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9956108-0-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Carrowmore
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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