An uneven if intermittently distinguished gathering of one essay and 15 stories (all but two original), each related to the theme of the title, from editors LeFanu and Hayward (the anthologies God, 1993, and Colors of a New Day, 1990). If juicy rationalizations get people through the day, then obsessions seem to get them through life's rough patches. Interestingly, it's the more limber, less brittle American voices here that contribute most memorably. Joyce Carol Oates's ``Life After High School'' establishes a shadowy, awkward romantic triangle whose third leg remains veiled until the epilogue. And Allan Gurganus's essay, ``Ode to Boy (Whitman at the Mall),'' has more fun with its voyeuristic survey of adolescent culture than the film Kids ever will. Meanwhile, Ivan Vladislavic's ``The Book Lover'' sends an eccentric South African bibliophile in search of the library of a woman he's fallen for entirely through the books he knows she once had. In Mary Flanagan's ``Folding,'' origami saves a group of art-school friends from their romantic confusion. ``The Anxieties of Desire,'' from James Hamilton-Paterson, follows the failed career of a French expatriate composer as he envies and loathes, with considerable anti-Semitism, the success of another, younger composer who shares his name. A few of the tales (Jeff Torrington's ``The Fade''; Adam Thorpe's ``Rigging'') suffer from English dialects that don't always ring intelligibly in American ears. Still, several minor pleasures lurk here and there. Lisa Tuttle tells a sexual ghost story (``In Jealousy''), and Ursule Molinaro completely inverts the terms of beauty in ``Rat Mother,'' one of those stories that gets funnier as it gains in grimness. Michäle Roberts's ``Lists'' is little more than an extended gimmick, but Cherry Wilder's ``Findings'' manages to wring ample suspense from a willfully limited premise. Not completely enthralling, but worth picking up for the four or five good pieces.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-85242-359-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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