From the author of An Act of Love (1997), among others: a clear-eyed look at a friendship between two couples that almost implodes when a child becomes seriously ill and damaging secrets are revealed. Narrator Lucy West is married to Max and is the mother of 14-year-old Margaret and first-grader Jeremy. The Wests live in a small town, where Max is editor of the local newspaper, and life has mostly been good, but as Lucy begins her story, in June 1998, she’s suffering from panic attacks. She’s been offered a job with a prestigious ad agency in nearby Boston, and she fears that Max, who himself suffers from depression, might not be able to cope if she works full-time. As the summer progresses, Lucy finds she has to deal with even more disturbing problems, these detailed in chapters alternating with her recollections of the recent past. Lucy and Max are close friends with Kate and Chip Cunningham, parents of Matthew and Abby. The two women share confidences, their children are pals, the couples socialize and vacation together on Nantucket. As in all friendships, though, there are the inevitable moments of envy and competition. Lucy’s memories of the early years of the West/Cunningham bond reveal one especially fraught period. Lucy had a stillborn baby, and grieving Max ignored his wife, who found it hard to be friends with Kate when she gave birth to Abby shortly thereafter. A brief affair with Chip revitalized Lucy and her marriage; soon after, she was pregnant with Jeremy. But when Jeremy is diagnosed in August 1998 with cystic fibrosis, a genetically caused disease, and the doctor suggests Max be tested, Lucy has to admit that Chip could also be the father. Will her confession end not just her friendship with Kate but her marriage? Can love and loyalty endure . . . even barely? Plot-driven, yes, but there’s more than enough compensation in Thayer’s insights into the tangled webs woven by friendship. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20613-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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