A spinster Utahraptor searches for love and meat 120 million years ago: lighthearted but scientifically sound dino-kitsch from noted paleontologist Bakker. A consultant for the film Jurassic Park, Bakker is often called brilliant and controversial in the same sentence; The Dinosaur Heresies (1986), for example, presented his thesis that many dinosaurs were warm-bloodedan idea now gaining increasing acceptance. Here, he debuts in fiction with the tale of a female Utahraptor, Raptor Red, and makes the best of an obvious Jurassic Park knockoff by matching the inherent silliness with his own Monty Pythonesque commentary: Characters have claws like ginsu knives, Ghurka knives, ``the most expensive French Cuisinart,'' and so on. When a mouse-sized aegi survives an attack by a giant dino-ostrich, he writes that ``Over a hundred million years later, the flow of aegi genes will produce wonderful creationsgiraffes, elephants...Republican majority leaders. Charles Darwin himself.'' More provocatively, he uses Red's relationships with other dinosaurs to probe current human controversies: Why hate and spite are good from an evolutionary standpoint, why vegetarians are dumber than carnivores, why the odd-looking are rightfully rejected by their own kind, how firm thighs enhance chances of reproduction. The author knows his Disney as well as his dinosaurs: Red loses her mate in the first chapter, scrambles to survive, has a joyous reunion with her sister and her three chicks, and meets a cute raptor. Sister, however, won't hear of a romanceshe needs Red to help feed and watch the kids. The advantage over Disney is that genetic selection and the evolutionary struggle, not a marketing department, cue the plot twists. Science and serious fun blend as Bakker shares his love of dinosaurs: a natural for the next Disney movie. (Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-10124-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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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