Irish writer MacMath£na makes his US debut with a story collection that tackles—with rueful satire—a place that has the ``climate for revolution, but not the weather.'' MacMath£na's passion is always under control, but the stories pulse with a sense of frustration and anger at the ways in which those Irish who want a more progressive country are continually thwarted by ancient superstitions, rigid religious beliefs, and a pervasive sense that nothing can or will improve. In ``Wedge,'' a character who accidentally kills his alcoholic and abusive father observes that ``Life is like a tragic drama on television. There are two ways to play it, backwards or forwards. I prefer backwards because that way you always finish with a happy beginning.'' Stories like the ``Queen of Killiney'' (a typically corrupt politician suddenly finds himself pregnant and has to go to England for an abortion), ``Prisoner of the Republic'' (the failure to change the divorce laws ends a long love affair), and ``Waiting for Dev'' (a village awaiting the famous leader De Valera realizes that it is no better off than it was under the British) are all concerned with overtly political themes. Two notable and especially poignant evocations of the Irish dilemma are the title story and ``The Banquet of Life.'' In the first, a committed atheist must deal with the grief of his young daughter at the death of her mother as relatives invoke all the old religious beliefs and superstitions. In the second, Brother Fergus—a teacher who believed that ``absolute obedience kept the soul from `getting notions' '' but who also liked figures, discovering how much he would earn in the outside world for the work he is doing—begins to construct an imaginary life in which he is no longer ``outlawed from the Banquet of Life.'' Some pieces here don't travel as well as others, and one or two are marred by obvious sentimentality, but mostly this is an accomplished debut.
Pub Date: May 12, 1993
ISBN: 0-86327-103-0
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
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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