THE COMEDY WRITER

Name: THE COMEDY WRITER
Author: Peter Farrelly
ISBN: 0-385-49052-6

by Peter Farrelly ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1998

A winner, nicely skewering some of the weirder elements of life in lotusland, though not as black-witted and biting as some...

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Farrelly’s droll second novel (Outside Providence, 1988) trades on his adventures as a budding screenwriter.

Farrelly co-wrote and co-directed the grossout film Dumb and Dumber and co-directed Kingpin, which also had its grossout moments—as does this. When Henry Halloran, 33, who sells space on cargo ships, is dumped by his Boston girlfriend, he quits his job and takes off for Hollywood to try his skills as a writer. Once there, his attempt to save a woman by the name of Bonnie Driscoll from jumping from a 16th-floor roof fails, but he gets an artful story out of her suicide, a piece he manages to sell to the L.A. Times. He moves into the Blue Terrace apartments, across the hall from starlet Tiffany Pittman, a blond nympho with scientifically engineered breasts, who relies on him for neighborly help but tells him that she has a rule against sex with neighbors. Then the late Bonnie’s not-entirely-sane sister Colleen shows up at Henry’s door with her suitcases, and demands that he take her in until some money she’s expecting from Japan arrives. It never does, of course, and Henry falls ever deeper into the net of Colleen’s nuttiness, as well as into an obsession about Bonnie’s big jump. Meanwhile, he shucks a script around town and lands an agent, who sends him to meet with thuggish producer Ted Bowman. Ted wants him to write a film about romance in the ’90s featuring a love-stricken serial killer. The obliging Henry comes up with the grisly "Ice Cream Man," and the sociopathic Bowman growls with joy. Henry at story’s end has experienced little success either as writer or lover—but he is, nonetheless, a sweetly sympathetic figure

A winner, nicely skewering some of the weirder elements of life in lotusland, though not as black-witted and biting as some other recent Hollywood fiction.

Pub Date: May 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-385-49052-6

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.