An intriguing but uneven Red Scare tale.
A man attempts to throw a music festival while informing for the FBI in this novella.
New York, 1953. Two days after surviving his first police raid on a gay club, music manager Bruce Harnes is sent by his boss to Westchester County to the home of wealthy widow Dora Berlin. Berlin asks young Bruce to put on a summer festival on the grounds of her estate, something that he sees as an exciting niche project to help make a place for himself in the music world: “A music festival outdoors on a great estate! So much to do! Dates; artists; programs; publicity. Parking! My God, chairs! My God, what if it rained?” It appears to be a dream come true until the FBI turns up, armed with Bruce’s sexual orientation as leverage. Because of Berlin’s long-standing ties to certain Russians (she had a relationship with a prominent Russian inventor that only ended via the intervention of Stalin), the bureau demands that Bruce serve as a confidential informer, keeping tabs on Berlin and passing intelligence to his FBI handlers. Now Bruce must organize a festival (with his ex-lover as the music director, no less) while navigating the world of amateur espionage with his benefactor on one side and the FBI on the other. Meyers (I Remember Caramoor, 2017, etc.) writes in a confident and stylish prose, evoking the setting and time period with concision: “There’s glamour to New York’s early winter dusk, the city’s nerves and energies throbbing as people stride onto the pavements eager to get on with it.” Despite the rather absurd premise (this is not a comedic work), the author’s general disinterest in genre conventions should suck readers in—if only to find out where this is going. Some of the players (the FBI agents, in particular) are quite flat, and the ending comes quickly. Several characters and events would have benefited from a little more fleshing out. Even so, the book is a strange enough brew of elements and authorial choices to leave a distinctive impression.
An intriguing but uneven Red Scare tale.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63492-732-1
Page Count: 87
Publisher: Booklocker
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 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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