A wise and touching tale about a wealthy cancer victim who offers sage advice.
A dying man sets out to recalibrate the course of his life in this debut novel.
When it comes to astute advice, arguably nobody’s smarter than the suave high schooler Ferris Bueller, the popular movie character played by Matthew Broderick. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” Ferris wisely observes. Indeed, that realization dawns on this story’s narrator, Brendon Merullo, after he receives a cancer diagnosis at age 43. He may have succeeded at building a multibillion-dollar business, but that achievement came at a steep price: no time for the things that really mattered, such as his family—wife Amanda, and children, Thomas and Alexis. Now that he’s staring at an hourglass, watching the grains of sand sliding down, Brendon is haunted by regret. What’s the use of all the material goods he has surrounded himself with if he has no time to enjoy them, he wonders. “I found out that the price tag on the things we buy is not equivalent to their value,” Brendon says. He decides to “right the ship,” to live every minute to its fullest, to follow his heart, and to redirect his waning energy on setting up charities that will have a lasting, positive effect on his community, especially those battling cancer. Brendon makes time to be with Amanda, the kids, and his father, whom he calls a hero. By the tale’s end, he has made peace with his circumstances and learns to let go of regret. The novel’s storyline is pretty skeletal; not much really happens to propel the plot. Instead, most of the book reads like a commencement address directed at graduates, advising them to get their priorities straight before it’s too late. At one point, Brendon muses: “We all lead our lives as if we have an infinite amount of it. You only realize how precious time really is once you are about to run out of it.” But his lament is earnest and sincere, and his realizations about life’s real treasures will resonate with many, especially those facing similar circumstances. After all, Ferris might have been a slacker, but his heart was certainly in the right place.
A wise and touching tale about a wealthy cancer victim who offers sage advice.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8259-0
Page Count: 218
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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