An entertaining novel that founders in its superficial treatment of its characters, particularly women.
Intrigue, romantic rivalries, and mistaken identities abound in this Victorian drama.
Nathan Sinclair, the protagonist and piano-playing prodigy of Colton’s debut work of historical fiction, doesn’t think he’s anything other than the poor son of a French opera singer. But a meeting with celebrity debutante Jocelyn Charlesworth, so beautiful that “once you gaze upon her countenance, it is impossible to resist staring…disbelieving that a face could be so radiant,” launches an adventure he never could have imagined. Pursued by debt collectors, Nathan decides to become a fugitive, evading the law while performing at the social gatherings of London’s elite. At one such party, he’s introduced to Regina Lancaster, with whom he immediately falls in love. Though not as beautiful as Jocelyn, Regina, who lost her parents at a young age in a fire, helps place orphans with loving families. Meanwhile, Jocelyn, who needs “the perfect excuse to decline introductions and put a halt to [her] tedious letter writing,” hatches a scheme to convince her meddling family she’s courting Nathan, promising him that “since this shall all be a game, our feelings cannot be truly hurt.” Hoping to discredit Nathan, Jocelyn’s brother secretly publishes an article claiming that Nathan’s father was an art forger who was “sent to prison for twenty years, where he died.” Humiliated, Nathan disappears from London’s high society, but he is finally free to propose to his “beloved” Regina. A final twist reveals Nathan’s true parentage and ensures his engagement to Jocelyn, but he already promised himself to Regina. Nathan must choose between Jocelyn’s wealth and beauty and Regina’s virtue. Though this is an exciting read, packed with mysteries and unexpected twists, it lacks charm. The final chapters of the book resolve disappointingly, and women are treated solely as objects for marriage. According to Colton, beauty is a woman’s most valuable trait; the literally “disfigured” Regina is more suited for work than love, while the desired Jocelyn is destined for a life of “passion and pleasure.” The flat treatment of these female characters makes an otherwise engrossing novel unlikable.
An entertaining novel that founders in its superficial treatment of its characters, particularly women.Pub Date: July 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68114-229-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Anaphora Literary Press
Review Posted Online: 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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