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REMNANTS OF THE FIRST EARTH

Name: REMNANTS OF THE FIRST EARTH
Author: Ray A. Young Bear
ISBN: 0-8021-1581-0

by Ray A. Young Bear ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1997

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A continuation of native American poet Young Bear's exuberant fictionalized memoirs, begun in Black Eagle Child (1992), featuring the further remarkable adventures and recollections of the writer Edgar Bearchild. This is not so much a sequel to that earlier work as another (and even more ambitious) take on the themes explored in the first volume, once again using first-person narrative, letters, and poetry to trace Bearchild's life growing up in the 1960s and '70s on the Black Eagle Child Settlement in Iowa. ``Knowledge was the real issue,'' the adult Bearchild, a controversial poet, reflects at one point, ``knowledge needed by the next generation to facilitate their spiritual passage,'' and there's no doubt that a part of what Young Bear (a member of the Mesquakie tribe) is doing is to preserve a portrait of the rich, complex spirituality of his people, and of the way in which it penetrates every aspect of Native American life. Bearchild's often comic collisions with tribal folklore (which his family is determined, whether he likes it or not, that he should learn) deftly make plain the central role that a reverence for the past plays in maintaining the tribe's identity. He's also interested in tracing the ways in which this heritage is filtered through an individual's imagination, and transformed. Bearchild's life on and off the reservation is variously rendered as a mock epic, a spiritual quest, and a seriocomic adventure. There's also considerable anger here. As Bearchild notes, when reflecting on the current fascination with all things native, many Indians still regard white society as a ''master mouse-catching cat race that sadistically maimed its aboriginal prey for entertainment.'' Out of an idiosyncratic mix of folktales, rowdy adventures, and religious imagery, Young Bear has fashioned a powerful, utterly distinctive, and unsettling portrait of Native American life. It is one of the most interesting (and audacious) ongoing projects in American letters.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-8021-1581-0

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996

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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by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.