Once past its odd, sluggish opening, and not yet as far as its final ’scene," a reader finds much to enjoy in Sontag’s highly researched fourth novel (The Volcano Lover, 1992, etc.). It's a fictionalization of the American experience of celebrated Polish actress Helena Modrzejewska (here named Maryna Dembowska): first, as queen of an entourage that includes her family and her lover (Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz, called here Ryszard Kierul) and that joins a farming commune in California; next, as center star on a spectacularly successful extended tour that begins in Nevada ("making miners weep")) and ends in New York and London; then as working partner with American thespian Edwin Booth, another of the many men who threw themselves at her feet. Maryna’s epic story begins as a speculation hatched in the mind of a nameless woman narrator who, accidentally observing a private party in a hotel dining-room, "conjures up" the histories of its evidently foreign-born participants. The tale, thus begun, assumes several forms: a straightforward narrative of the move from embattled Poland to America as undertaken by Maryna and her second husband, Count Bogdan Dembowski, her three children, and several friends (notably, her importunate lover Ryszard); second, scenes from these and other characters’ viewpoints; third, Maryna’s letters home to her admiring physician "" Henryk; fourth, Bogdan’s diary, recording both his passive deference to Maryna’s wishes and his fleeting homosexual impulses; and finally, strangest of all, a monologue "addressed" by Edwin Booth to his new stage partner, the triumphant Maryna. The heart of the story is Sontag’s account of Maryna’s conquest of America: a wonderfully ironic, episodic chronicle of culture shock that includes a wittily described meeting with Henry James (who, it’s implied, will immortalize Maryna in The Tragic Muse). Lamentably shapeless. Yet, though Sontag may not be a novelist, really, she enlightens and entertains in what becomes, against rather long odds, a surprisingly lighthearted and likable book.
Pub Date: March 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-17540-3
Page Count: 387
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
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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