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INVISIBLE WORLD

Name: INVISIBLE WORLD
Author: Stuart Archer Cohen
ISBN: 0-06-039227-4

by Stuart Archer Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 1998

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Top-quality debut suspense novel, set largely in South America, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Inner Mongolia, that crossbreeds The Third Man with The Maltese Falcon and comes up a whopping winner. Obsession is all when it comes to ancient textiles, be they from Peru or China: ``. . . they retain that dimension of all the lives that have passed through them. They were worn, they were used for making offerings, they were stepped on and washed in streams. It's there. You can feel it. And not just that. A textile is a crystallization of a culture. Of history.'' Thus it is when three men and a woman try to track down a very, very old Chinese map of the Invisible World that has been woven into a piece of tapestry. To add a delicious twist, one of foursome is already dead—or is he really another Harry Lime? The mutual friend who binds them all together is seemingly failed artist Clayton C. Smith, who upon killing himself in Hong Kong has invited them to his funeral, and even sent stateside buddy Andrew Mann plane tickets to Hong Kong and, as it turns out, $100,000. Also on hand for the reading of Clayton's will is Jeffrey Holt, a textiles expert who facilitates various manufacturing projects when not trying to smuggle 2,000-year-old pre-Columbian weavings out of Peru or similar artifacts out of China. The group is joined by Silvia Benedetti Jimenez, a young Argentinean, who has her own textiles agenda and is not to be trusted in a plot full of interlocking double-crosses. Clayton has left Andrew a series of clues he must track down and which at last lead to a monastery in Inner Mongolia where the map of the Invisible World will be found. Perhaps. Bodies never drop, only large chunks of Chinese philosophy and arias about great finds in the empire of cloth, as Cohen puts everything into this Far Eastern masterpiece.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 1998

ISBN: 0-06-039227-4

Page Count: 368

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.