An overwrought exploration of family and history.
Searching for answers about her mother’s past, a woman visits a psychic and an uncle she barely knows in this literary novel.
In 2010, an Orthodox Jewish woman visits the Manhattan consulting room of psychic Jennifer Rose, once Rosetti. Ever since her mother Rebecca’s death, Ora Neumann, 61, has been sunk in depression and desperately needs to hear her mother’s voice again, although her religion and her husband forbid trafficking with the occult. But she’s disappointed by the session and waits another two years to open her mother’s jewelry box, afraid of its possible secrets. The contents lead Ora to Uncle Henry, 87, whom she remembers only hazily. From him, she slowly extracts her mother’s story. Born in Poland, Rebecca, her brothers, and her fiancé, Shmuel, escaped to America before World War II; Rebecca’s school friend Tsipora “Tsipi” Greenstein stayed behind and survived the Holocaust. In 1947, Rebecca and her now-husband Shmuel, together with Henry and his co-worker Max, visit the thriving Kibbutz Tzofim in Palestine, where Tsipi now lives. Rebecca loves kibbutz life and stays on for a time when Shmuel returns to America and his job as Tsipi and Max begin a romance. Tsipi reveals that the kibbutz shelters a hidden munitions factory turning out bullets for the upcoming war of independence. Other revelations from Henry provide Ora with a new understanding of her mother that finally gives her peace, as she reports in a letter to the psychic. Wachtel (Three for a Dollar, 2017, etc.) taps into the near-universal longing to understand one’s roots. Together with the well-described historical settings, this lends urgency to the book. The book’s lyrical tone, however, can feel overcooked, especially since it’s employed, implausibly, by every character: “Freed, her red auburn ringlets threw sparks into the night air as Tsipi took one last glance up at the moon, as if the two possessed some long-held secret.”
An overwrought exploration of family and history.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-022-5
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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