Findley’s penchant for busy plotting is as evident here as in his earlier work (The Piano Man’s Daughter, 1996, etc.). This time, though, when a Tiresias-like character locks horns with analyst Carl Jung in the latter’s Zurich clinic, one expects the story to be rich with experiences past and present, conscious and unconscious. In a spring snowstorm in 1912, two weary travelers from London arrive at the famous BÅrgholzli Clinic—one, gaunt and mute, to be treated for suicidal intentions; the other, charming and lovely, to supervise. But Pilgrim, the suicidal one, has reason for his death wish: He can’t die, no matter how often he tries. His escort, Lady Quartermaine, knows this, yet she still wants to rescue him from despair. Shrewdly, Jung gets Pilgrim to talk again and also wheedles out of Lady Quartermaine one of Pilgrim’s journals, which reveals that the patient, a famous art historian, was acquainted more intimately with Leonardo da Vinci than seems possible. Jung can't accept the evidence that Pilgrim, in a previous form, was Leonardo’s lover and the model for the Mona Lisa, instead viewing this as an exceptional fantasy. When Her Ladyship dies in an avalanche, however, and leaves Pilgrim’s other journals to the bewildered doctor, he is soon out of his depth. The journals document Pilgrim’s lives as a 16th-century Spanish shepherd befriended by Saint Teresa; a stained-glass craftsman working on the windows of Chartres Cathedral; and a nobleman enjoying the action during the siege of Troy. Pilgrim’s adversarial attitude and Jung’s affair with someone at the clinic keep the psychiatrist from making progress with his patient. Eventually, Pilgrim turns violent and escapes, to fulfill what he sees as his final obligations. Some clever turns and echoes of Mann’s Magic Mountain, but in the end, Pilgrim’s many lives make him hard to know, and his nemesis Jung, for all his ambition, seems more inclined to chase skirts than such truth as might exist in the puzzle his patient embodies. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019197-X
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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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