A clear, inspiring story about needing a bit of hope to cross the distance.
In his latest novel, Cushman (Hospital Work, 2013, etc.) introduces a minor miracle into a staid hospital setting, and magic happens.
Dr. Boles “couldn’t quite figure out how, or why, such a thing would be here.” Outside the entrance to a Greensboro, North Carolina, hospital is a hopscotch outline, its “colors of yellow, red, green and blue” adorned with the playful challenge Try It. Walter Winslow of the hospital’s board of trustees isn’t having it and straightaway calls the housekeeping department to erase it. Somehow, the hopscotch board keeps reappearing. Inexplicable but welcome, its presence comes as a mysterious relief to a large cast of hard-luck cases: a sick little girl who can barely remember what it’s like not to be sick, a bitter veteran who left his legs in Iraq, a beleaguered CEO who can’t make the hospital as successful as the board would like, a local reporter with a marriage on the rocks. Once the hopscotch chalk has come to stay, things change. A stiff-shouldered doctor “jumped his way across the boxes, before heading to his car”; an old man with dementia recognizes his wife again as he sees her hopping along the board; pediatricians write their patients prescriptions reading “have fun, go outside and play 2 x a day.” John, the janitor so often tasked with graffiti removal, briefly considers hiding somewhere to see who keeps drawing this one on the sidewalk, but he decides that “life, he knew, was short on mysteries, and this was one he didn’t mind leaving unsolved.” Cushman has written an unabashedly inspirational novel, one that aims to quicken the reader’s spirits and deliver exemplary lessons through the eyes of characters we can’t help but pity and feel fondness toward. Miracles can still take place, even in the dourest spots. Some readers may find it implausible that a thing so small as a chalk game could bring such joy to a diverse and embittered group, but others will find the book uplifting.
A clear, inspiring story about needing a bit of hope to cross the distance.Pub Date: May 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60489-177-5
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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
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