A friend-triangle so busy with the bright lights of the big city that it never quite decides whether to be a fun read or a...
Two gay men and their pseudo-hag go looking for love and drugs in the London club scene.
It’s not surprising that British author Burston acknowledges Russell T. Davies here, since this debut is so clearly influenced by Davies’ fizzy UK TV show Queer as Folk. It could almost have used some of the same characters’ names. Readers may think at first that the story is going to be about 32-year-old Martin, whom we meet in the opening pages as he is slowly realizing that Christopher, his serious boyfriend, has just left him after acquiring a new, gymed-up physique and the wandering eyes to go with it. Martin’s best mate John—a flighty flight attendant who’s mentally a 15-year-old, with a sense of caring compassion to match—is sort of sorry for him, but not really, and he uses Martin’s newly single status as an excuse to drag him out to every club and bar in town so John can show off his new drug-dealer boyfriend Fernando. The third in this little triangle is Martin’s friend Caroline, a Vogue-ready young professional about town with a boyfriend, Graham, whom she’s convinced is gay, and a mounting coke habit. None of them seems terribly bright, but they do like their drugs, and a good chunk of the tale is filled by Martin and John’s wild, Ecstasy-soaked escapades. Meanwhile, Caroline spins around in her own insecure orbit. She drives the actually quite heterosexual Graham away by trying to out him at a family dinner, and then her boss catches her doing lines on her mousepad. Although he gives Martin the denouement, Burston seems more emotionally invested in Caroline’s character, relegating John and Martin to their own stunted immaturity.
A friend-triangle so busy with the bright lights of the big city that it never quite decides whether to be a fun read or a morality tale. It ends up a slick but unrewarding mix of the two.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-69133-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
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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