Though hard-boiled horror-writer Laymon has enjoyed a brisk career in mass-market and the occasional hardcover (The Stake, 1991, etc.), this stomach-churning mix of cannibalism and sexual sadism is Laymon at his pornoviolent worst—without the irony or manic glee that lifts most of his work above pulp. What's also here in spades, though, is Laymon's express-speed writing, an onslaught of declarative sentences and single-sentence paragraphs that whips the story along. The narrative opens on a note of sexual menace, as pretty D'Arcy Raines, a tour-guide at Mordock's Caverns, notices creepy 15-year-old Kyle Mordock ``staring at her rump'' during a tour. Moments later, the power shuts off, plunging the 40 people on the tour into pitch blackness 150 feet below the earth. A grim above-ground flashback reveals that the blackout was caused by a fire set by an enraged man who believed that Caverns' owner Ethan Mordock had killed his daughter. Other flashbacks, more vicious still, show that Ethan has indeed for years been snatching, raping, and torturing women, and that he has just introduced Kyle to the practice—but that he doesn't kill his victims. Instead, he drops them down a chute into a closed-off section of the Caverns, where most are eaten by previous victims but a few survive to go mad in the dark. When D'Arcy and her charges try to escape by breaking into this section, a bloodbath ensues, with the cannibals munching and crunching and the tourists gouging and biting back, as Kyle ogles D'Arcy and schemes. Will D'Arcy survive long enough to be saved by her sexy mom and her mom's new boyfriend, who even now are spelunking to the rescue? Maybe, but even Laymon's juggernaut prose can't redeem this off-putting exercise in depravity, which is as sordid as they come.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-08845-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
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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