An oddly compelling mashup of sweet romance and action-adventure.
A Korean War veteran finds love with a younger woman facing brain surgery in this debut romantic thriller.
In this book’s prologue, U.S. Army Capt. Lance Bonner bails out of his exploding plane during the Korean War. With skill and stealth, he takes out more than 50 pursuers on the ground before being rescued two weeks later. He returns to civilian life, his exploits known only to military insiders and, of course, the North Koreans, who dubbed their elusive target “the knife monster.” Flash-forward to Bonner, now age 67. Lonely since his Alzheimer’s-afflicted second wife began living in a facility the year before, he registers for online dating, listing “I cry at movies” on his profile and expressing interest in hearing from women ages 50 to 65. Vicki Lutil, 32, believes that he’s just the kind of man that she needs, so she changes her profile’s age to 52. They soon meet and experience an immediate connection, spending idyllic days dancing, sky-diving, volunteering at a soup kitchen, enjoying Bonner’s Maine lake house, and, of course, making love. Early on, though, Vicki, who’s jittery and prone to tears, confesses that she’s facing dangerous brain surgery and may have only a week left to live. Bonner accompanies her to the hospital on the date of her surgery—and action scenes ensue, revealing a mob plan to recruit Bonner to take out a rogue drug lord killing Drug Enforcement Administration agents in South America. There’s drama and fantasy aplenty in this multigenre novel by first-time author Daviau, who, like Bonner, is a retired Maine lawyer. He effectively uses Vicki’s pending surgery as a ticking time bomb in the plot, and he also evokes surprising sympathy for his unlikely couple; both are laid low by circumstances but also find true love. That said, there are some challenging tonal shifts as events move from the rosy, languorous Nicholas Sparks–like glow of the couple’s time in Maine to a breakneck, bloody, and often befuddling plot in South America (why, for instance, does the mob care about DEA deaths?). Overall, however, it’s a highly appealing hybrid.
An oddly compelling mashup of sweet romance and action-adventure.Pub Date: May 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4575-3800-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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