A frank, funny, immensely winning novel about a “sex pioneer” exploring the hinterlands of desire.
A coming-of-age story metamorphoses into a global sexual odyssey.
Kurt Larsen, the ardent young hero of this debut novel, lives in the small Norwegian town of Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle, where privacy for a teenager in the late 1990s remains in short supply. Kurt’s dreams extend far beyond the constraints of his town; he wants to “canvass the entire world for perfect bliss,” he says; “I wanted to investigate the secret thoughts of my peers. I wanted adventure, to be a sex pioneer.” His pioneering is initially limited to placing ads for anonymous hookups with strange men. Through such desperate teenage measures, he meets Jonny Larsen, with whom he’ll have an on-again, off-again relationship throughout the book, as Kurt moves on to college (where he’s the “thin-skinned, over-interpretative, horny type—a roaming satyr”). At university, the scope of his mission suddenly broadens immensely when he begins a fast-paced international flying agenda to qualify for an incredible airline giveaway that will provide him with five free tickets to anywhere in the world. On one of these stopovers, in Oslo, he sees Ragnar, a young man “on top of my list of candidates for sexual perfection,” to whom the entire narrative is addressed. Kurt clearly loses his heart to Ragnar, pleading with him that second chances at their kind of happiness don’t come along often: “Later in life there’d be work, family, and the twenty-four hour job of raising children.” The plaintive, hyperaware tone is typical of Kurt’s narration of his various erotic escapades, which are related by the author in prose that manages to be vivid without becoming either titillating or melodramatic (“Tomorrow I’d meet a dark-haired boy just under my height,” Kurt says of one of his earliest encounters. “And soon after, I’d remove his blue and yellow all-weather jacket and get down to some serious boy fun”). Kurt might at one point profess a desire to be normal and average, but in reality, his far-flung exploits are a rebellion against a young man’s hunger for experience and fear of stagnation. Karlsen conveys the poignancy of it all with extremely knowing skill, raising Kurt’s sordid, picaresque adventures to the level of a life quest.
A frank, funny, immensely winning novel about a “sex pioneer” exploring the hinterlands of desire.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9969272-0-8
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Krutt & Plutt Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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