BEATNIKS

Name: BEATNIKS
Author: Toby Litt
ISBN: 0-09-926839-6

by Toby Litt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2002

The boys are almost too silly to believe, but Mary’s an excellent guide on the faintly ridiculous road that leads eventually...

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The healthy lusts of an aimless young woman do battle with the overwrought imaginations of two young men who would be guardians of the Beat movement.

Mid-’90s suburban London is the setting, but “Jack” and “Neal” pine for midcentury America and the days of Kerouac and Cassidy in whose honor they have shed their baptismal names. Litt (Corpsing, 2001, etc.) cheekily narrates as the smart but rather at loose ends Mary, who, like Neal and Jack still lives at home despite being well past school age. Encountering the lads at what she thought would be a party, Mary stumbles into their meditation session and quickly develops a huge crush on handsome Jack while Neal gets a huge crush on her. She also makes a firm enemy of Maggie, current top chick in this tiny Beatnik revival movement. Mary, far from keen on the ’50s hipster business, is nevertheless willing to join the scene if it means being near Jack. The rules are, however, tricky and a little tiresome. Jack insists on conducting their lives as if the ’50s were still ticking, reading nothing other than the Beat canon, and even writing in that style. Soon, though, Mary realizes it is Neal who can really write. Jack does the usual Tortured Young Man stuff that morphs into wretched garage rock. She also realizes that if she’s ever to loosen Maggie’s death grip on Jack, she’ll need to capitalize on Neal’s affection for her. Which, with semi-honorable reluctance, she does. And then things get really tricky. As the only one with the use of a car, Mary is pleased to transport the lot to Brighton, where they will work on their newspaper and on the works of Otto Lang, a dead Beat poet. Maggie, furious at Mary’s participation, bails out, leaving the field clear. But the route to Jack’s loins is traveled with trusty Neal alongside all the way. Say, weren’t Kerouac and Cassidy. . . ?

The boys are almost too silly to believe, but Mary’s an excellent guide on the faintly ridiculous road that leads eventually to San Francisco.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-09-926839-6

Page Count: 242

Publisher: Marion Boyars

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002

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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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.