By the author of many, many historical novels (and also grim little sagas of concentrated familial nastiness like Vollands, p. 625): a view of the strenuous career of Marie de Guise of France, mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, born in 1587, six days before the death of her father, James V. The fictional narrator here is Claudine de Vouvray, resilient and feisty, who is happy to accompany her beloved half-sister Marie de Guise (neither illegitimate Claudine nor Marie ever publicly acknowledges the relationship) to Scotland, where the widowed Marie will be the queen of James V, the dangerously volatile victim of a punishing childhood. The pair accommodate, however, and both are overjoyed when two sons are born—and devastated when the babies die. Their deaths—plus the defeats by the ever-invading English- -destroy the King, and he dies after the birth of Mary. It's then that Marie de Guise begins her perilous rule among powerful neighboring and internal combatants—royals, religious (the ``reformers'' led by John Knox are on the march) and Scottish chiefs and landholders. Through it all—edgy chamber diplomacy, journeys, wars, and horrid deaths—Claudine is Marie's loyal confidante, though she's been driven forth once, after it was obvious that she was carrying one of James V's many bastards. Eventually, Claudine's adventures in love and marriage and rudimentary survival end in France, but Queen Marie dies in Scotland, fighting to the last to preserve the Scottish crown. Hill's conscientious monitoring of the heels and deals can be a rough slog (the snarl of names and multitudinous feuds is formidable), but Claudine and her adventures offer some relief, and this is a plausible portrait of a Queen and her harsh and dismal battle to secure a throne to which her daughter Mary would return to be Scotland's last monarch.
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07091-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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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