Though punctuated by clever cartoons, it’s still too long and not very funny.
A 20-something Florida house-flipper navigates the land mines of young adulthood.
Holic (American Fraternity Man, 2013, etc.) captures the essence of the novel he’s sending up here, Jay McInerny’s Bright Lights, Big City (1984), while transposing it to a more boring place—Orlando, Florida, circa 2009—offering way less cocaine and replacing the Brat Pack vibe with a True West–ish rivalry between brothers who are not nearly as interesting as Sam Shepard's angry siblings or McInerny's 1980s-era stereotypical coke addicts. Constructed as five “books,” which are entangled but not orderly, the novel tracks the arc of 20-something loser Marc. He’s been abandoned by his fiancee, Shelley, as well as his business partner, Edwin, who left him with 10 lousy properties right on the eve of the real estate bubble's bursting. He’s also estranged from his well-meaning but ruthless father. One of the troubling qualities of this novel about a privileged dude is that it's often, well, whiny; Marc is a sad sack whose narrative drama only changes when he’s forced to take in his freeloader bro, Kyle. The first book is constructed as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel, which might or might not resonate with readers but definitely reflects Marc's gloomy existential crisis in which any decision seems like torment. Through all the books, there are endless sequences of Marc, Kyle, and their various friends watching the end of the Orlando Magic’s 2009 NBA season, broken up by odd jolts in style. The third book dives deep into Marc’s childhood, ending with him being assaulted after another drunk, angry night out. The next volume gets even stranger, abandoning Marc’s first-person narration for a series of vignettes from the points of view of Marc’s brother, his friends, the mayor of Orlando, and a long-dead, legendary man named Orlando Reeves, a soldier killed during the Seminole war. It all comes to a head during a friend's wedding, constructed by the narrative as a “Final Exam” for Marc, forcing him to take stock of the decisions he’s made and just what it means to be a “grown-ass man.”
Though punctuated by clever cartoons, it’s still too long and not very funny.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-941681-61-9
Page Count: 620
Publisher: Burrow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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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