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SWEETGIRL

Name: SWEETGIRL
Author: Travis Mulhauser
ISBN: 978-0-06-240082-6

by Travis Mulhauser ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2016

Maybe enjoy a Coen brothers double feature—Raising Arizona and Fargo—instead.

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A first-time novelist borrows well-worn tropes.

Percy James is 16 years old and an orphan, basically. Her mother might not be dead, but she’s not exactly around, either. Percy is, in fact, searching a meth dealer’s house for the missing Carletta when she finds a baby named Jenna and, on impulse, snatches the infant from her crib. Will the neglected teen enlist the help of a responsible social worker in finding a more salubrious environment for both herself and Jenna? Oh, heavens no. She will, instead, take the cold, filth-covered foundling to the home of her mother’s ex, a gruff-but-kindly alcoholic. Will the baby’s mother and her meth-cooking boyfriend even notice the baby is gone, and will they care? Yes and yes! Drug-addled, gun-crazy rural high jinks ensue. One expects a narrative of this sort to unfold against an Appalachian setting—or within the swampy confines of the Florida panhandle, maybe. That Mulhauser has, instead, situated the fictional Cutler County at the northernmost point of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula is definitely the most original part of his novel. Percy, certainly, is an established type. She’s wise beyond her years, committed to doing the right thing despite—or is it because of?—the hardships she has endured. And, like every other character in this novel, she speaks with a folksy eloquence that requires strenuous suspension of disbelief. “While the particulars of a given calamity may be impossible to predict, while I could never say I expected to find a baby in the bedroom, chaos itself was always confirmation of the dread I carried certain in my bones.” Only a reader who is willing to believe that any teenager has ever expressed such a thought is capable of appreciating this book.

Maybe enjoy a Coen brothers double feature—Raising Arizona and Fargo—instead.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-06-240082-6

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015

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.