Flawed, but a solid start for a new novelist.
An accidental shooting transforms a New England town and the lives of three boys.
Change comes fast for 14-year-old Teddy LeClare when his .22 rifle discharges in his parents’ living room. A new friend who lives in one of the fancy developments in town urged Teddy to load the gun, something he’s always known not to do. Before the cops arrive, his mother makes him swear that he will lie about what happened to anyone who asks: the police, nosy kids, even his father. Teddy finds himself a pariah among his freshman class of 600 students, for although he’s too young to have his name listed as a suspect in the local paper, their New Hampshire town is small enough that word travels fast. Teddy doesn’t care. This limbo he’s living in until the fingerprint and gunshot residue tests come back (a friendly patrolman tells him it’s not like on TV—the results could take a couple months) suits him just fine. The only thing he can feel is the super-heated top of his Bic lighter pressed tight against his skin. Unknown to Teddy, though, he has become a local hero to a self-styled America First group of teenagers, who rage against gun control and other “Federalist” restrictions. He doesn’t know what to make of them or their anti-drugs, anti-sex-before-marriage, anti-land-development credos that also seem to include opportunistic shoplifting and acts of vandalism against the rich and mighty. When they turn their pent-up aggression on the other boy under suspicion for the shooting, Teddy finds the complications of his young life suddenly compounded. Debut novelist LaMarche writes compellingly about small-town mores, and the pacing is brisk as Teddy’s life spins out of control. But the author refers to Teddy throughout as “the boy,” a narrative conceit that keeps not only the character Teddy, but also the reader, at a distance.
Flawed, but a solid start for a new novelist.Pub Date: April 17, 2007
ISBN: 1-4000-6605-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 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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