A wryly funny and moving story of bogus physical exercise that turns into genuine spiritual exertion.
A dissolute preacher strives for redemption in this debut tragicomedy.
Abner Kincaid is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking 59-year-old minister of the Church of the Fiery Word of God in Kansas (he privately calls it “a cathedral for nitwits”). His only friends are George Granger, an old Army buddy, and the ubiquitous bottles of Jack Daniels that he sucks “down like a drowning man sucks air.” He runs into trouble when the church secretary—who doubles as his mistress—runs off with his savings; his Cadillac gets repossessed; and the flock is evicted. Repairing to a barren 50-acre homestead inherited from his estranged father, he hits upon another godly scam: the Lord’s Cross-Training Farm, whose members can get fit—for a hefty fee—by doing heavy labor to Christian exhortations (“Now get up off your fat, sinful asses and get to work!”) and schlepping weights around a Stations of the Cross–themed racecourse. Presiding with merry cynicism—“If we can wring enough work out of these saps, then we might start making money”—Abner fleeces one congregant of lottery winnings, beds another, and exploits them all until his callousness precipitates violence. Taken aback, he’s then hit with a terminal cancer diagnosis, and this raucous, hard-boiled, satirical novel deepens into a meditation on life and death. Abner remains his ornery, profane self, but under the tutelage of a kind but no-nonsense Vietnamese-American nurse, he starts to grudgingly reform his selfishness and to wrestle with his demons: a childhood broken home; his mother’s suicide; memories of terror and carnage from the Vietnam War; the stark fear of mortality. Abner’s saga alternates between bleakly evocative Plains gothic—he spends much time boozing and sweating in motels where “the only light was the flickering of the neon sign”—and deadpan humor from sharply etched, multidimensional characters, all couched in muscular prose and pitch-perfect dialogue. As calamities pile up, Mendelson resolutely avoids sentimentality. Abner’s stock-taking proceeds in the same slovenly, confused way as his previous life did only slightly better, lit by experience and empathy. The result is a reluctant turn of heart that feels hard-earned and emotionally compelling.
A wryly funny and moving story of bogus physical exercise that turns into genuine spiritual exertion.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-979195-38-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
