Ambitious, engrossing, full of melodramatic thunder.
A richly imagined answer to a vexing question: Why did the mighty ships of the Spanish Armada fail in their mission?
Finney, the Cambridge-educated author of dazzling Elizabethan-era historicals (Unicorn’s Blood, 2001, etc.), swashbuckles right into the story: as Philip of Spain threatens to take England and all its riches by force, the equally bellicose English plan their defense. Alas, they lack sufficient saltpeter for the manufacture of gunpowder; English dealers in armaments may well be indirectly supplying the Spaniards, and Queen Elizabeth’s court is crawling with Papist traitors and spies of all stripes. Is Simon Anriques—a Jew born in the New World, known in England as Simon Ames, and seemingly her Majesty’s loyal servant—really a double agent? Just ask the pious Portuguese torturer into whose hands he falls and his silent minions, who pour gallons of water down Anriques’s gagging throat, stopping just before his belly bursts. (Squeamish souls take note: Finney relishes brutality—the galley scenes, in which Anriques later figures, are rife with flogging, festering wounds, more torture, and a wee touch of forced sodomy.) Anriques’s African slave, Merula, tends to his sickly wife Rebecca and offers incantatory, noble-savage speeches when not casting spells inspired by her bloodthirsty personal deity, Lady Leopard. Merula is able to call down terrible storms from the indifferent heavens, and Rebecca herself manages to blow up a galleon, with the aid of Thomasina de Paris, a wonderfully clever dwarf—in fact, a court fool to Queen Elizabeth. Pursued by English fire-ships, the Armada is routed in shameful defeat. In an epilogue, Finney admits to making up some of the details, but who cares? This is fiction—and the gorgeous, carefully wrought prose carries all before it.
Ambitious, engrossing, full of melodramatic thunder.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31285-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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