Heartfelt and charming; a book that goes down easy.
Achingly sweet and unexpectedly nuanced, Emmich’s clever debut follows the unlikely bond between a grief-stricken actor and a gifted 10-year-old girl in Jersey City.
Joan Lennon Sully is a 10-year-old with a startling gift: she can remember, in exacting detail, everything that’s ever happened to her. She knows how many times her mother has said “it never fails” in the past six months; she remembers the date and reason for every time she’s ever cried (Wednesday, March 25, 2009: the day Pepper was put to sleep; Wednesday, May 15, 2013: the day Mrs. Dresden called time on a test before she was finished). But she knows most people do not have her memory; most people, she understands, forget things, and Joan Lennon does not want to be forgotten. So when she spots an ad in the paper for “The Next Great Songwriter Contest,” she sees her answer: a good song is like a permanent reminder, she reasons. If she can win the Next Great Songwriter Contest with a Joan Lennon original, then she’ll never be forgotten. She just needs to find the right collaborator—and that’s where Gavin Winters comes in. An old friend of Joan’s parents, Gavin is a successful actor in Los Angeles overwhelmed with grief after his partner Sydney’s sudden death. After he has a very public breakdown (fire was involved), Joan’s parents invite Gavin to take refuge with them in New Jersey, where he and Joan strike up an unusual deal: he’ll help Joan with her song if, in return, Joan will recount her memories of Sydney, snapshots from his few visits to the family over the past several years. But what starts as a source of comfort for Gavin takes an unsettling turn when Joan unknowingly reveals details that force Gavin to contemplate the possibility that Sydney may have been keeping secrets of his own. Overwhelmingly tender, sometimes verging on saccharine, the novel gets by on its profoundly likable pair of leading characters: what the book lacks in bite, it makes up for in charm.
Heartfelt and charming; a book that goes down easy.Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-31699-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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