Never diffident, Olson (Utah, 1987; The Woman Who Escaped from Shame, 1986; etc.) again boldly mixes philosophy, art theory, and a good bit on the aesthetics of landscape gardeners with a story that more often than not reads like a thriller. It has at its center a heroine, mysterious and beautiful, so we are told, who seems to make a lot of people, more usually women than men, fall irrevocably in love with her. Jack, the narrator, a landscape architect in California, recently beaten up by some thugs, returns to Chicago as executor of his uncle Edward's estate. Staying with his aunt, he begins to sort out Edward's paintings and to read the letters and papers that his aunt, Edward's estranged wife, has kept over the years, many unopened. As Jack reads on, he learns of his uncle's visit to the island of Lesbos, where he had seen a beautiful young woman, Dorit. Back in London, Edward meets up again with Dorit. Using skills developed as an illustrator for medical books, Edward soon becomes successful as a painter, although the surface of his pictures is merely covering for intricate drawings, and even hidden messages. One picture eerily prefigures a strange encounter Jack has while driving just outside Chicago. Another commands "find Angela," Edward's long-lost daughter. Jack's attempts to trace Dorit lead to the murder of two of her friends and the violent death of an art curator Jack had consulted about the value of the paintings. The plot twists and turns, as Jack returns to California, hides on the yacht of Dorit's former husband, escapes from the yacht in Panama, only to rejoin it as it sails to Lesbos, where all is explained, not necessarily satisfactorily. Olson writes with verve, even brilliance, and the plot here is often quite enthralling, but the discursiveness and ultimately the sheer improbability of his story detract from his considerable talents. Fascinating but flawed.
Pub Date: March 1, 1990
ISBN: 0671684868
Page Count: 442
Publisher: Linden/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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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