An engrossing, hallucinatory relationship story.
A young man struggles to articulate his chaotic but numbed feelings in this debut novel.
Seventeen-year-old Eddie falls headlong for Elizabeth, a freshman who plays in the school band with him. As they begin dating and grow closer, he’s as awkward and self-conscious as he is earnest about his first relationship: “In the beginning was Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was in light, and Elizabeth was light.” However, it turns out that circumstances have effectively blurred the line between fantasy and reality for Eddie; his father died years ago, and to this day, the young man addresses his thoughts to the void where his dad should be. His mother responds to the loss by clinging to Eddie in ways that slowly become sinister. And since the fateful car accident, he’s been put on mind-altering medication for unspecified reasons, which causes him to lurch through life in a physical, mental, and emotional fog: He assumed the medication was punishment for his disobedience, he explains, “the longest punishment in childhood history.” However, Elizabeth cuts through his detachment, shining in his memories like a divine being. Yet the significance of her presence in his life raises the stakes of their relationship in untenable ways. Typical hurdles, such as uncomfortable meet-the-parents dinners, assume a mythical awfulness in Eddie’s fragmented neuroses and visions, and he can barely enjoy his newfound happiness under the looming fear that he’ll somehow taint or pollute it. Hahn writes in a clipped, frenetic manner that effectively conveys his narrator’s mental state. Recurring images of snow, fire, and blood give the book religious overtones that feel almost medieval despite Eddie’s refusal to attend church with his mother. Other symbols crowd the story but in a manner that rarely feels heavy-handed; in a particularly engaging scene, for example, Eddie and Elizabeth argue as they watch an inflatable fun house collapse on a group of screaming children. Collectively, the author’s choices create a satisfying sensory experience as the protagonist seeks a real and present version of himself.
An engrossing, hallucinatory relationship story.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947041-28-8
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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