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MISSILE PARADISE

Name: MISSILE PARADISE
Author: Ron Tanner
ISBN: 978-1-63246-009-7

by Ron Tanner ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2016

A literary beach read that will keep you thinking after the vacation’s over.

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A chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific provides the backdrop for Tanner’s (From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story, 2012, etc.) comic exploration of expatriate life and its consequences.

In the 1950s, the U.S. used the Marshall Islands as a test site for nuclear bombs. Fifty years later, the Americans in Tanner’s breezy tale are more self-destructive than anything, though their imprint on the island nation is hardly a net positive. For better or worse, they stick mostly to American-dominated Kwajalein, which “looks like a 1950s cinderblock beach town gone to seed” and houses the U.S. personnel who study missile defense at the nearby Ronald Reagan Test Site. Among the employees there is Cooper, who sails all the way from California for his new job but manages to lose a leg in the process. Alison, the art teacher at the Kwajalein high school, isn’t much better off: she’s coping with her husband’s recent drowning, mostly by drinking her way through lunch. Then there’s Art, a bedraggled former Peace Corps volunteer who married a native and now serves as “Cultural Liaison” to the expat community, explaining Marshallese customs while lobbing rhetorical grenades at American culture from afar. Meanwhile, the only Marshallese protagonist, Jeton, pines for his American girlfriend, Nora, who's preparing to return to the U.S. for college. Marshallese are banned from Kwajalein after nightfall, and Jeton’s attempt to see Nora before she goes proves a crucial turning point in the plot. The themes here are major—global warming, imperialism, America’s role in the world (the story is set soon after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal). But Tanner displays a light touch, favoring snappy dialogue over didacticism. The result is winning, though for some the novel may feel just a touch too lighthearted: at various points characters confront everything from alcoholism to catastrophic weather to sharks, but one gets the sense early on that, for the four major players, all will (mostly) work out in the end.

A literary beach read that will keep you thinking after the vacation’s over.

Pub Date: March 15, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-63246-009-7

Page Count: 372

Publisher: Ig Publishing

Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.