A courtly Richmond dilettante's visit to Philadelphia turns into a nightmare when he is mistaken—and mistaken, and mistaken- -for another man. As his train pulls into 30th Street station, a porter hands Tristram Heade his lost wallet. But it isn't his wallet, as he discovers after he checks into his hotel—not his usual hotel, but another one, where everyone greets him as Angus Markham, the name inside the wallet. Tristram can see a general resemblance between himself and the photo of Angus, but that's no reason why dewy Fleur Grunwald should turn up outside his door, announce that she's finally ready to take the advice he, Angus, gave her three years ago at Sarasota to leave her abusive husband. Trapped first by his fear of making a scene, then by solicitude toward Fleur, Tristram finds himself insensibly slipping into Angus Markham's identity, even as he realizes that Fleur herself has an alter ego named Zoe, whose words and actions bespeak a worldly knowledge and a thirst for revenge far beyond Fleur's experience. When Tristram goes to have it out with Fleur's maligned husband, Otto Grunwald, Otto calmly denies every one of Zoe's impassioned charges. Otto tells Tristram that not only does he not forcibly tattoo Fleur, as she claims he does, but that the tattoos that so horrified Tristram are fakes, vegetable oil rather than ink, applied by Fleur herself. Tormented by indecision about whom to believe, Tristram returns to the Grunwald home determined to prove or disprove Fleur's story once and for all—but he hasn't counted on the extent to which he's been charmed out of himself, not by Fleur, but by Angus Markham, and by the glass eye that seems to have been watching him ever since he picked it up outside Fleur's apartment. With echoes of Poe and Henry James, Smith (Snake Eyes, 1991, etc.) gives this anecdotal tale a shivery intensity. (Book-of- the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selections)
Pub Date: March 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93947-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 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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