Veteran Bailey (Kitty and Virgil, 2000, etc.) navigates with economy and grace between two lives and among many time-frames....
An adoring nephew pays homage to his childhood savior, a star of European operettas, in a masterly, unsentimental evocation of childhood and exile.
A train is taking a small boy and his affectionate but agitated father across snow-covered Romania. The boy’s mother has mysteriously disappeared, and, in Paris, he will be sent on alone to his uncle in London. It’s 1937, Romania is turning fascist, and seven-year-old Andrei Petrescu will now turn into Andrew Peters. Although he will never see his parents again, he’ll get a magnificent welcome from Uncle Rudolf and his devoted entourage. Rudolf Peterson (formerly Rudi Petrescu) is one of Romania’s most famous sons; his thrilling tenor and dashing good looks have made this consummate ladies’ man as rich as Croesus. What matters for little Andrew, though, is his uncle’s outpouring of love, which offsets Andrew’s recurrent nightmares. The boy always comes first for Rudolf, even if it means displacing a hot blond so he can cuddle his nephew to sleep. Still, Andrew will understand, in good time, that his uncle’s cheerful front hides a deep melancholy. Rudolf was once headed for great roles in grand opera, but he succumbed to the easy money of operettas, which he now views with contempt. It will be 11 years before Rudolf tells Andrew his parents’ fate: his half-Jewish mother was raped and murdered by anti-Semites, and his father drowned himself in the Seine. Has Rudolf been overprotective? Not in Andrew’s eyes, for, after his uncle’s early retirement and a brief, joyless marriage of his own, he devotes himself entirely to Rudolf’s business affairs, “the contented prisoner of his melancholy.” His uncle’s death changes nothing, and here Bailey allows Andrew to slip too easily into the unlived life, that staple of English literary fiction.
Veteran Bailey (Kitty and Virgil, 2000, etc.) navigates with economy and grace between two lives and among many time-frames. This British author’s skills—and magic touch for showing love at work—make for a texture unusually rich.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-31834-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
IN THE NEWS
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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