Arch prose and agreeably flawed characters make this worthwhile despite the flabby structure.
Bilston’s sequel to Bed Rest (2006) features an even more wearying topic: colic.
After the birth of baby Samuel, whose gestation mandated the aforementioned rest, his colicky nonstop screaming threatens to rob his power-lawyer parents, Brit transplant Q (short for Quinn) and husband Tom, of the minimal downtime not already preempted by their all-consuming jobs at elite Wall Street firms. When their billionaire friend Paul offers his Connecticut vacation home, Q and Tom welcome the chance to re-evaluate their recession-threatened career paths. Q’s younger sister Jeanie, a newly minted sociologist, arrives from London to babysit, her life in flux: She’s jobless, flatless and soon to be boyfriend-less. In a meet-cute worthy of Desperate Housewives, Paul visits his house, catching Jeanie in the buff. Tom and Q consider buying the small-town law practice of drunken attorney Kent, and while he’s on a bender, they take over a child custody case. The client, naive, impoverished Emmie, is being sued by not-yet-ex-husband Ryan for custody of their son. Although Ryan’s domestic brutality is legendary, he’s got the police in his pocket and serious dirt on Emmie. Angela, her infant daughter by another father, had died of SIDS, Emmie was told, but the death certificate shows that the child died of Reyes syndrome. Since Reyes takes days to develop, only an unfit mother would have failed to seek medical help in the period leading up to Angela’s death. Tom and Q learn that Emmie’s old-fashioned doctor had not only prescribed aspirin (linked to Reyes) for Angela’s cold, but downplayed her worsening symptoms. What to do when doctor, medical examiner and police collude to hide the doc’s negligence? Although the legal subplot has many holes, it is a welcome distraction from the patently contrived obstacles delaying the predictable union of Paul and Jeanie, and saccharine scenes depicting the impossibly pleasant nursing home where Jeanie eventually gets a job.
Arch prose and agreeably flawed characters make this worthwhile despite the flabby structure.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-088994-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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