Rife with female frivolity, punchy one-liners, and sex. Margolis (Apocalipstick, 2003, etc.) is at her best when she veers...
Love conquers all, though you’ll wish it wouldn’t.
Stephanie Glassman is a single mother working a scraped-together string of part-time jobs while feeling guilty about leaving Jake, her increasingly bratty toddler, at home with an indulgent nanny. Stephanie is a talented singer who has all but given up on her dream of a musical career when she runs into her old crush Frank, who comes complete with fame, good looks, and the irksome incompatible fiancée. His presence at one of Stephanie’s small singing gigs makes her day. Meanwhile, friends encourage Stephanie to send CDs out to agents, and Jake’s father, Albert, pops in for the holidays with Sunnie, his stereotypically ditzy girlfriend. We learn that though Albert is a self-centered womanizer, he genuinely cares for his child and strives to be a good father. When Sunnie finds herself pursuing an old flame, Stephanie and Albert succumb again to their physical attraction, and Albert even spits out the idea of marriage and their possible future as a happy family. The story lags as Stephanie repeatedly runs into Frank (newly single), and discusses her love-life options with friend Lizzie (the unappreciated wife and mother) and Cass (the fun-lovin’ single girl). Eventually, Stephanie gets that big call from an agent. Thinking that she may land the lead in a musical, she finds herself congratulated by her squealing friends, family, and Frank, but, alas, not by Albert. She’s disappointed to learn that her supposed break involves providing vocals for a lip-synching Hollywood diva named Katherine Martinez (wittily tagged “K-Mart”). So Stephanie makes a series of questionable choices, driven by her need to make a living and her concern for her son. A subplot involving Lizzie and her cheating husband has an unnecessarily tidy ending, as does our main story.
Rife with female frivolity, punchy one-liners, and sex. Margolis (Apocalipstick, 2003, etc.) is at her best when she veers from the shenanigans and lets us glimpse our heroine in her poignant everyday struggles.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-33733-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
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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