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THE MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON

Name: THE MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON
Author: Tom Spanbauer
ISBN: 0-87113-468-3

by Tom Spanbauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 1991

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Gender and racial lines are bent out of shape in this tale of turn-of-the-century Idaho spun by a youth who is part Indian, not quite wholly homosexual, and in the grip of a powerful imagination. Spanbauer (Faraway Places, 1988) creates a pansexual West that John Wayne wouldn't have recognized. The narrator, brought up in an earthy but idealized whorehouse in the small town of Excellent, is called ``Shed,'' because it's out in the shed where he turns his tricks—from about age 12 on—after his full-blooded-Indian mother is murdered. He also has the Indian name of Duivichi-un-Dua, the meaning of which he seeks to discover. He feels some kinship to the Berdache, male Indians who lived as women before the uptight whites put a stop to it. In Excellent, the enemies of erotic and other pleasures are the patriarchal Mormons, who are pictured as rabidly racist as well. Meanwhile, the narrative voice, at its worst, is false naive; at its best, strong and vivid, creating an oddly convincing world as seen by someone on locoweed and whiskey. Shed forms a family with Ida Richelieu, the whorehouse proprietor and a whore herself; Alma Hatch, Ida's colleague and bedmate; and cowboy Dellwood Barker, who may be Shed's father but is most certainly his lover. Freud would have had a field day. The 384 pages offer plenty of plot twists, humor, graphic but not prurient sex, didacticisms, some magic realism (North American-style) and a consistent view of life that might be termed ``rebellious romanticism'' for the 1990's. A different view of the West where the bisexuals and prostitutes wear the white hats, gender is up for grabs, and every permutation of love will have its way.

Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1991

ISBN: 0-87113-468-3

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NOW IS THE HOUR
by Tom Spanbauer

- BOOK REVIEW
IN THE CITY OF SHY HUNTERS
by Tom Spanbauer

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.