The best of these stories tell resonant and lyrical tales of the dangers and frustrations of life at all ages.
An intimate look at lives both everyday and surreal.
The stories in this collection abound with reminders of mortality, characters who live on the periphery of death, and harbingers of ominous fates to come. “Childhood is a dangerous country,” says the narrator of the title story—a statement that could be the thesis for this entire collection. (Though adulthood doesn’t fare much better.) The narrator of “The Man Who Fell Out of the Sky” is forced to grapple with the responsibilities he inherits after a friend dies in a plane crash and his own talent for disseminating bad news. At the center of “Miracle Boy” is a comatose child whose presence seemingly heals the sick, even as he himself is unable to regain consciousness. While some of these stories cover familiar thematic territory—family responsibilities, the flawed bonds between parents and children—Gerard is at his best when he veers into the surreal. “Gloriana,” for instance, boasts a great opening sentence: “There are rules about ghosts, as everybody knows.” The story that follows blends mystery and hints of the supernatural to create a beguiling result. And “Night Camp,” which opens the book, is structured as its narrator’s memories of his time working at a camp for children who, for reasons physical and psychological, were on a nocturnal schedule. It’s a haunting beginning, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury in both its nostalgia and its glimpses of something sinister below the surface. The story showcases the empathy that runs throughout the book and establishes larger themes of memory’s fallibility and the way that youth does not exempt people from harm.
The best of these stories tell resonant and lyrical tales of the dangers and frustrations of life at all ages.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943491-09-4
Page Count: 161
Publisher: BkMk/Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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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