sense of loyalty, made it easy to betray his country.
Brooding, creepy fictional biography of the Jewish-American chemist who became a courier for the Soviets before and
during WWII and was significant in the exposure of Klaus Fuchs and the conviction of the Rosenbergs. The sensational spy stories of the “50s have been deflated by post-Cold War revelations that information allegedly leaked by Americans accused of serving the Soviets was not all that consequential. After Whittaker Chambers, the most pathetic American to plead guilty to espionage during the Red scare, was introverted Harry Gold, who lived with his brother and Russian-born parents in Philadelphia. Gold, a profoundly uninteresting bachelor whose underwhelming presence deflated Hoover's attempt to cast him as the embodiment of evil, dictated several detailed confessions to the FBI. He testified as a prosecution witness against the Rosenbergs, served half of a 30-year prison sentence, and then worked as a researcher in a hospital, dying at his parents' house in 1972. Gold has none of the glitter that appeals to biographers, but, as fictionalized by Dillon (You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles, 1998, etc.), he becomes a classic le Carr‚ drudge, an intelligent, repressed social failure whose innocent urge to do good and suspicion of anti-Semitic Depression-era America make him an easy mark for Soviet recruiters. In dry, restrained prose, Dillon shows how Gold's hunger for human contact helps him ignore the hypocrisies and manipulations of his handlers. As a courier moving documents and money, he spends long hours on lonely trains, transfixed by the glamour his secret life provides. After building him up as an existential hero worthy of Graham Greene, Dillon piles on the irony, quoting long, patronizing passages from his trial and suggesting Gold's essential tragedy was that no one cared enough to know him. Intense, disturbing fictional portrait of a historical also-ran whose unshakable faith in human goodness, and deeply moving
sense of loyalty, made it easy to betray his country.Pub Date: April 21, 2000
ISBN: 1-58567-012-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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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