A veteran romancer returns with her third hardcover (The Outsider, 1996, etc.), a flowery valentine to friendship and the love that crosses all boundaries. Williamson co-opts Edith Wharton territory in this story of a buttoned-up Edwardian American and the wild, marauding Irish boy of her dreams. In the mill town of Bristol, Rhode Island, at the turn of the century, Emma Tremayne (one of the ``wicked and outrageously rich Tremaynes'') lives in the lap of gentrified luxury in a well-ordered, confined society of ``rules and duties and reproaches, of must-do's and must-nots.'' Emma's father has deserted her cruel and slightly delusional mother and is now living with his ``doxies'' in Havana; her homosexual brother has committed suicide; and her sister is crippled for life and drugging herself with chloral hydrate. But no one talks about these things. Instead, everybody talks about the weather. Then into Emma's life, just as she's about to marry successful textile tycoon Geoffrey Alcott, comes mill worker Bria McKenna. Bria, dying of consumption and pregnant, and her brother Donagh, the parish priest, become the spiritual center of the story, representing the power of love. Though they come from vastly different social classes, Emma and Bria not only become best friends, but Emma unwillingly falls in love with the young woman's husband Shay. Meanwhile, not long for this world, Bria hatches a scheme to bring together all the people she most loves: her friend Emma, her husband, and her three wee babes. It's only after her death that Shay and Emma give in to their powerful attraction. But can people from such dramatically different worlds really find love and sail into the sunset (on Emma's trim little boat)? In one Grand Guignol sequence, Emma's family sends her to a 19th-century asylum to cure her of her irrational passion. But not even straitjackets can alter the course to a happy end. A clichÇ, yes, but an extremely satisfying one. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52153-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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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