A funny, energetic tale about the war between primness and hedonism.
A femme fatale lures a naïve lawyer into a stock swindle in this jaunty Eisenhower-era caper.
As a hotshot young Wall Street mergers-and acquisitions lawyer with a lovely fiancée, Jack Preston is living the American Dream circa 1954. Alas, something is missing from his life–namely sex. The 27-year-old is still a virgin, and he can’t muster much heat for his frigid bride-to-be, who makes it clear he’ll get no more than a kiss on the cheek until their wedding day, which is a year away. Enter bombshell Alice Mercer, who wears tight sweaters and clingy skirts, has a passion for boxing and baseball, and tears Jack’s clothes off whenever they’re alone. Jack never thinks to question her sexual ferocity, even when she ties him up, subjects him to exquisite erotic torments and forces him to blurt out the confidential details of the corporate mergers he’s working on as the price of relief. It’s only after federal investigators probing stock manipulations surrounding said mergers charge him with insider trading that Jack realizes he’s been bamboozled by a woman whose murky past connects her to industrial espionage, Vietnamese communists and the brothels of Hanoi. Hoffmann’s fizzy plot, which culminates in a crackerjack courtroom duel, makes no more sense than is strictly necessary, but the novel works as a canny, exuberant homage to the ’50s. The characters are energized by a new economy of easy affluence, electronics and advertising (financier Joseph P. Kennedy plays an odd but appropriate presiding role), and they navigate a cultural sea change as propriety and sexual repression give way to a tantalizing new ethos of sexual fulfillment. Hoffmann’s overripe sex scenes–“place my lips where it pleases you most, and I will worship you there”–make one long for a bit more sexual repression, but otherwise the well-tuned prose makes Jack’s wising-up an enjoyable romp.
A funny, energetic tale about the war between primness and hedonism.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-6084-4059-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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