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GHOST HORSE

Name: GHOST HORSE
Author: Thomas H. McNeely
ISBN: 978-1928589914

by Thomas H. McNeely ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 2014

A dark, deeply stirring novel about the quiet tragedy of growing up in a broken family.

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A Texas boy grapples with his parents’ estrangement in McNeely’s debut novel.

Eleven-year-old Buddy lives with his mother in 1970s Houston at a time when proper, white middle-class living means that mothers don’t work, parents don’t divorce, and white children don’t befriend the Mexican children down the street. Buddy’s young life has missed all these supposed marks of propriety: His mother, Margot, works in a hospital laboratory; his absentee father, Jimmy, has blown back into town and wants a divorce; and Buddy spends much of his time with his Latino best friend, Alex, who’s working on a film about a ghost horse. Buddy’s torment slowly, steadily grows throughout this sensitive novel as his immature father and his bafflingly stubborn mother make him choose between them again and again. His cold grandparents, meanwhile, only exacerbate the bitter divide. He finally tries to find solace in a new friendship with a fellow student whose home life is similarly caustic. As he struggles to survive the failures of the adults around him, he careens down a path of unhappiness and destruction. McNeely beautifully portrays the confusion of a boy doing his best to deal with matters that are beyond his understanding but fully capable of doing him harm (“He wishes a sheet of fire would cut through the yard; he wishes [his mother] would disappear. But the questions still pulse, there, in the darkness: What will happen when his father comes back?”). The author effectively shows how evil is not born but made; as the grown-ups continue to pile their burdens on him, something hateful begins to bloom in Buddy that wasn’t there before. Overall, the novel will be a haunting read for anyone who’s experienced the childhood anguish of divorce and a powerful reminder to mothers and fathers of the unseen damage that their behavior can inflict on their children.

A dark, deeply stirring novel about the quiet tragedy of growing up in a broken family.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2014

ISBN: 978-1928589914

Page Count: 260

Publisher: Gival Press

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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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by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
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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.