Huneven appears on the scene with a California-set and deftly managed melodrama about life, love—and alcoholism. Red Ray was a thriving West Coast lawyer with a glamorous and ambitious wife—until she dumped him for being a drunk, and until he himself ended up nearly dead, thrown from a car wreck during a booze-driven tour of the southwest. ``Red Ray,'' says Huneven, ``rose from that curb a sober man.'' Where to go? What to do? Red returns to the half-decrepit Victorian mansion in the Santa Bernita Valley that he'd bought earlier as a gift and hobby for his renovation-minded wife and transforms it into—a ``drunk farm.'' The mansion itself was once the home of a rich and cultivated woman who was also owner of the surrounding citrus groves—and whose Mexican workers lived in small sturdy bungalows clustered near the groves. The hardworking but laid-back Red makes a great success of it, filling the mansion with recovering drunks, becoming well known, receiving grants, and earning the lifelong fidelity and affection of the men he cures. Huneven's story begins when Red takes on a graduate student in his 20s named Lewis Fletcher, who's in denial not only about his alcoholism but about his own destructive and immature temperament. As the long tale unravels in its leisurely way (the as-yet unspoiled valley, famous for its ``round rocks,'' is almost as much a character as the people in it), Lewis slowly gets cured—and slowly grows up—but there will be complications even so, partly from his love affair with the divorced Libby Pollack Daw and its unhappy aftermath, partly from his dealings with the treacherous local beauty, Billie Fitzgerald, partly from an old, deeply buried mystery, and partly from what happens to the beloved Red Ray. Long, slow, intelligent, and humane (not to mention filled with high expertise about alcoholism), Huneven's first offers an honest and compelling allure.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45437-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
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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