Minor insights far outweighed by a parody of childhood so perfect it’s annoying.
Documentary filmmaker Sedlack debuts with a somewhat backward young man’s insipid account of a journey toward adulthood with his folks in tow.
Richard Clark’s parents take him on a tour of Africa when he’s 19, a trip his mother always wanted. But the Dark Continent promptly sends her into madness—Richard hardly cares, since he hates her (he thinks she might have once molested him)—and the alcohol isn’t really helping dad to cope at all. Meanwhile, Richard distracts himself with sex with a German frau (while her husband watches), a crocodile man in a cave who warns him that he stinks of death and lies and should leave Africa, and a 20-year-old named Nicole, who doesn’t mind that Richard has a strategically repaired harelip. Richard’s journal entries occasionally segue back into fantasies he had about housewives at 15, ranging on to old football games that might have made a difference in his life had he scored a touchdown, and to a belt beating once administered by dad—but eventually the relationship with mom is the one that becomes an issue again in Africa. Is it because things have gone sour with Nicole? “It’s not your lip that makes girls run. It’s your mind. They can tell. You’re not right,” says she. Author Sedlack overplays the journal style, and Richard’s adolescence, too: what we read is often little more than a dry diary by an oversexed and unambitious stylist. But as weird as mom and dad are, and as bizarre as the excursion to Africa will become, even Richard will eventually arrive at something of significance and realize that “Mom and dad have shown me that true freedom is found not in the lotus position, and certainly not in the revelation of dark, buried secrets, but in the jaws of a lion.”
Minor insights far outweighed by a parody of childhood so perfect it’s annoying.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2003
ISBN: 1-58567-300-5
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
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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