More compact than five seasons of soap operas, but equally brain-curdling.
Sixteen years after a trip to Thailand, youthful indiscretions dog four 30-something ex-backpackers, in this voluminous latest from Vincenzi (Almost a Crime, 2006, etc.).
At Heathrow Airport, a teenaged, anonymous returnee from Thailand gives birth in a closet, then abandons her infant. Never fear—“Baby Bianca” becomes a London tabloid darling, and is adopted by a decent middle-class couple. Flashback to Heathrow the year before: Four rucksack-toting strangers—vicar’s daughter Martha; pretty, chubby Clio; tycoon’s daughter Jocasta; and her golden-boy brother Josh—meet while awaiting a flight to Bangkok. They vow to reunite, but lose touch after fanning out across Southeast Asia and Australia. Cut to 2000. Martha is a successful corporate lawyer. Jocasta relishes reporting for a London tabloid, the Sketch, and sex with her “commitment-phobe” boyfriend and fellow scribe Nick. Clio is a caring geriatrician defying NHS restraints (no fan of universal coverage, Vincenzi) to care for her elderly patients. Sterile, she dreads bursting her control-freak surgeon husband Jeremy’s bubble of stay-at-home motherhood. Josh, married father of two, is still as randy as he was back in Thailand, where bronzed backpacking beauties were flinging themselves at him. When Baby Bianca, now Kate, surfaces (as a patient advocate for her grandmother), red herrings proliferate. Blond, striking Kate resembles Jocasta, who covers the NHS-bashing story and forms a bond with her. Kate models for a Sketch fashion spread and would-be birth mothers pester her. Meanwhile, her real mother begins to spiral downward, despite a rejuvenating affair with a younger man and a role as an MP candidate. Rebounding from Nick, Jocasta marries a wealthy retail magnate. Clio leaves Jeremy and finds her soul mate in Kate’s publicist/manager Fergus. Then a jealous mentor spills the MP candidate’s secret to Nick. Nick sits on the story until Kate and the candidate’s conservative parents can be told, and the plot, flirting with implausibility all along, succumbs.
More compact than five seasons of soap operas, but equally brain-curdling.Pub Date: May 29, 2007
ISBN: 0-385-51988-5
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
