A fast-paced, thought-provoking spiritual thriller.
In Taddeo’s (The Supermarket, 1996) novel, a Montreal homeless man is more than he seems.
Amid the hustle and bustle of a slightly futuristic Montreal (there are hover cars, homes wired for surveillance and rumors of robots with cloned human skin), barely anyone notices a homeless man named Gabriel Norson, an amiable soul among the city’s homeless. He’s befriended by spirited teenager Tammy, whose friendship began as rebellion against her parents but soon blossomed into genuine feeling, and by easygoing, open-minded bank worker John. Gabriel leads a nondescript life, but lately, he’s tormented by bad dreams and quasi-mystical visions that seem to stem from the blank stretches he’s always had in the memories of his life. At one point, he finds himself in a hidden cavern populated by mystical children who hint that he’s the inheritor of a great destiny involving spiritual truths long hidden by the Catholic Church and the powers of the world. “The cycle of nature is spun like a wonderful web from which no one escapes,” one of the children tells him. “It sounds more terrible than it is.” Gradually, Gabriel begins to suspect that the crux of his recent afflictions is the time he spent working on his Ph.D. at Berkeley, where he vaguely remembers being hooked up to wires and monitors by people who were studying him for unknown reasons. In a parallel narrative skillfully deployed, readers learn that Gabriel is being hunted by a covert National Security splinter group headed by wunderkind Steve Hamilton, “a tall, broad-shouldered hero of almost comic-book stature.” Hamilton and his team pursue Gabriel because he’s actually a time-traveling fugitive unwittingly bearing knowledge of lost Messianic writings that, if revealed to the world, could cause global upheavals. Much of this is familiar Da Vinci Code territory, but Taddeo presents it all with strong storytelling instincts and expert juggling of the many subplots. While some of those subplots are a little too outlandish for any but hard-core fans of the genre, the narrative more than compensates with its sure-handed conviction.
A fast-paced, thought-provoking spiritual thriller.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1770979093
Page Count: 312
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
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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