Unmemorable.
In a North Carolina mountain hamlet, the renovation of a crumbling mansion reveals unsettling secrets.
Paxton Osgood, pampered daughter of one of Walls of Water, N.C.’s, wealthiest families, is planning a gala to mark the 75th anniversary of the Women’s Society Club, founded by her grandmother Agatha. The invitations go awry due to a freak storm, which is a harbinger that dark forces still lurk at the gala site, the Blue Ridge Madam manor, once owned by lumber barons, the Jacksons, who lost their money when their logging grounds were turned into a national forest. The house, deemed haunted, was abandoned for decades until salvaged by the Osgoods, who plan on converting it to a bed and breakfast. Paxton’s brother Colin has returned from his world travels to landscape the grounds, but when a gnarled peach tree is uprooted to make way for a statelier transplant tree, a skull is found in the crater. Local shopkeeper Willa Jackson, whose grandmother Georgie was 17 when the Jacksons fell from grace, declines her invitation to the gala—her ancestral memories have made her hostile to Walls of Water’s affluent residents, and too many people recall that, in high school, she was a prankster whose antics were blamed on Colin. The skull undoubtedly belonged to Tucker Devlin, a charismatic, need we say devilish grifter who came to town in 1936, instantly captivating all resident females with predictably dire results. Devlin concentrated his blandishments on the Jacksons, persuading them to invest their last dollars in an ill-advised peach orchard at an altitude unconducive to fruit. Georgie now occupies the same nursing home as her former best friend Agatha, but only Agatha is still of sound mind: She reveals that she formed the Women's Society Club not for philanthropic purposes but to reckon with Tucker. Discordant notes of magic realism at times distract from what is essentially a benign tale of spunky Southern women finding true love after overcoming not-very-significant challenges.
Unmemorable.Pub Date: March 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-553-80722-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
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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