Serious, contemplative, and also slow-moving third from Goodwin (The Blood of Paradise, 1979, etc.).
A contemporary family drama, filled with angst and redemption.
While enjoying a warm Washington, DC, night with his semi-girlfriend, Tucker Jones receives a damning phone call: a fellow parent informs him that a party has gotten out of hand and Tucker’s 14-year-old daughter Kat can be found in the pool house fellating a group of drunken boys. Tucker rushes over, can’t find Kat, confronts a pack of smug teenagers, and somehow becomes involved in the accident that fells Jed Vandenberg. The teenager ends up losing an eye, the Vandenbergs file a multimillion-dollar civil suit against Tucker, the government files felony assault charges against him, and his ex-wife is threatening to move Kat to New York, since obviously Dad has lost control. Or has he? Kat is a good girl, an athlete, barely involved with boys, he himself is happy and successful, so how did he and his daughter get involved in this Jerry Springeresqe trouble? Though the legal implications are certainly distressing (as is guilt over inadvertently maiming the Vandenberg boy), Tucker’s real concern is Kat: the more he insists on closeness between them, wanting her to open up about all this mess, the more she shuts down and pushes him away. The tangled emotions seem appropriate given the events of the fateful July night, but when a few hundred pages are given over in dissection of them, the urgency of feeling becomes lost among the all talking. Though much else occurs: Tucker enters into therapy to sort himself out (and finds he is lonely for love); he considers a possible romance with his best friend Lily, who is married; Kat falls deeper into depression and becomes briefly involved with their housekeeper’s charismatic church, and Kat’s best friend Abby becomes pregnant by Jed Vandenberg. In someone else’s hand this would turn into a big sudsy mess, some kind of modern, therapy-driven Peyton Place, but Goodwin’s writing is too smart for that failing. Instead, it is weighted down by its own earnestness and worthy intentions, offering a sympathetic and labored analysis of all involved.
Serious, contemplative, and also slow-moving third from Goodwin (The Blood of Paradise, 1979, etc.).Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-15-100806-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
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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