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BOX SOCIALS

Name: BOX SOCIALS
Author: W.P. Kinsella
ISBN: 0-345-37749-4

by W.P. Kinsella ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 30, 1992

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The author of Shoeless Joe (1982), upon which the film Field of Dreams was based, returns with his third novel about baseball. Kinsella sets his story in 1940's Alberta, the Canadian prairie province that closely resembles the Upper Midwest in both its passion for baseball and, at least according to Kinsella, its earthy and colorful citizens. One Truckbox Al McClintock, a mechanic perpetually covered in grease, excites the locals with his ability to hit a baseball out of the park and across the river behind it. People think he might make it in the majors, but how would that be possible for an obscure Canadian? Well, there's a war on, and Edmonton has become a stop-off point for American troops building the Alaska Highway. To keep the troops happy, exhibition baseball is brought in, featuring none other than the great Bob Feller, and through contrived events Truckbox bats against him. There's not much of a story otherwise, unless it's of young Jamie O'Day's coming-of-age; he's the ``hillbilly'' narrator named after James Oliver Curwood. The account of box socials, where young men bid for lunches packed by the mothers of eligible young women, is amusing and recalls the period sweetly. So too do the Ukrainian wedding and the great, farcical game the novel moves toward. And yet the myth Kinsella trades on—that out of a Midwest full of rubes will come a great baseball player—is undercut by his desire at all costs to please, to turn everything into a joke. A kind of condescension to the material results, and McClintock or his sexy sweetheart Louisa May become caricatures. Jokes about the Minnesota weather (``nine months of winter followed by poor sledding'') are getting awfully stale, and Kinsella's stylistic trick of repeating funny adjectives (``genuine'' Cardinals or ``more-or-less-Doreen Beach Sigurdson'') seems forced. Nostalgia and lust are the appeals here, as if Garrison Keillor had gone randy. Bound to be popular—but Kinsella's formula grows thin.

Pub Date: May 30, 1992

ISBN: 0-345-37749-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MAGIC TIME
by W.P. Kinsella

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DIXON CORNBELT LEAGUE
by W.P. Kinsella

- BOOK REVIEW
SHOELESS JOE JACKSON COMES TO IOWA
by W.P. Kinsella

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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.