Some pretty good golf tips from Sal, but that’s about it to hold your attention.
Beard (Dear Zoe, 2005) very faintly echoes Updike at Updike’s weakest in a golf novel about a suburban Pittsburgh lawyer.
Michael, 45, and spunky, beautiful Kelly, 40, who met when she applied to be his secretary, are married and have two lovely daughters. When Michael announces that he wants to train for golf’s senior gold circuit, Kelly agrees to support his ambition if he can score under 70 two times. But then she announces she’s pregnant. Still traumatized by her pregnancy that ended in stillbirth, Michael shows no enthusiasm for having another child, leading Kelly to withdraw from him sexually. Michael’s pharmaceutical stock has taken a sharp turn upward, leading him to believe that he’s about to attain independent wealth. Sexually adrift, he begins frequenting “sexual therapy” center Healing Touch, deluding himself that what he’s offered there does not constitute infidelity. But when he develops a guilty conscience, he tells Kelly all about it, and surprise—she tosses him out. Around the same time, his stock plummets, and to make it all worse, he’s had to move back in with mother and father. He turns to golf, and as he plays under the tutelage of wise and loyal caddy Sal, he reminisces about his romantic and sexual history, trying to figure out where he went wrong and how to get back on track. Now on the golf course, Sal explains to Michael that he has the skill to win but must find the soul to play. As Michael readies for the game of his life, Sal arranges for Michael’s parents and Kelly to make an appearance. With earnest, chapter-introducing quotes from James Taylor, John Steinbeck, et al., the author clearly has sincere pretensions for his characters and story. But his intentions fall flat. There’s no doubt that Kelly is taking Michael back, and that the life he remembers is merely tepid. Time to move on.
Some pretty good golf tips from Sal, but that’s about it to hold your attention.Pub Date: May 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03759-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
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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