Inventing a do-nothing slob you can empathize with is a neat trick, but the story’s a bit too slovenly.
Death and misery stalk the antihero of Neilan’s comic debut—and that’s just at the crummy temp gig.
Shane knows a bar whose happy hour begins when most people are taking their first coffee break, but then he’s got the kind of life that’ll prompt a guy to start drinking at 10 a.m.: He’s fully convinced that his upstairs neighbor is carrying on an untoward relationship with his pet guinea pig; his landlord won’t be so pushy about the rent if he’ll sleep with his wife; and his sexual encounters with his girlfriend, Gwen, tend to feel a lot like professional wrestling matches. Oh, and he’s accused of murdering Marlene, a deaf dental hygienist who taught Shane to talk dirty in sign language. Neilan ultimately resolves Marlene’s death but not Shane’s bottomless hatred for himself and the world around him, and the funniest bits have him going metaphorically off the grid—the beer at a party tastes “like kiddie porn,” sex with the neighbor’s wife is “like an off-duty clown swinging two fish together by their tails.” If you can hang with Neilan’s taste in rude jokes and non sequiturs, there’s lots to like: Even if the humiliation of temp-slave life is well-trod ground for comedy writers, Shane’s abjection about alphabetizing files (and worse, his getting congratulated for his fine job of alphabetizing) gets some fresh laughs. But the occasional laugh-out-loud line doesn’t salvage a narrative that never quite jells. Shane’s regularly referenced tic of stealing salt shakers never becomes meaningful in terms of either plot or characterization, and the jokes get more leaden toward the end, as the author is forced to tie together the story’s multiple threads. More than a couple gags at the expense of the mentally retarded don’t do Neilan any favors, but Shane’s never pretended to be polite.
Inventing a do-nothing slob you can empathize with is a neat trick, but the story’s a bit too slovenly.Pub Date: May 2, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35174-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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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