A predominantly traditional ghost story, with enough apparitions to unnerve readers.
A man may prefer the raging snowstorm outside when his refuge turns out to be a mansion that could very well be haunted in this debut supernatural tale.
Adem’s looking forward to a Christmas-weekend visit with his cousin Alp in Boulder, Colorado. The traveler gets a head start to stay in front of the forecasted blizzard but is unfortunately sidetracked by attractive diner waitress Felda. Her offer of a night together is too much for 23-year-old virgin Adem to pass up, delaying his anticipated arrival in Boulder until the following day. He’s barely on the road again when his Impala skids into the forest, the ensuing accident leaving him injured with a crashed car and crushed phone. Luckily, Adem finds a mansion and butler Vladimir Barkov saves him before he dies of frostbite, hunger, or bear-mauling. Wadim, master of the house, certainly appears inviting, and gives Adem access to hearty meals, courtesy of a personal chef, as well as an inside pool. Then things get weird, starting with someone creeping into his room in the early morning hours. Soon he’s witnessing ghostly figures walking through doors or shouting vague, ominous threats—“You’re next!” The snow eases up, but a mass murderer on the loose results in a police lockdown in Boulder. Now Adem’s a virtual prisoner and apparently the only person able to see the ever-menacing ghouls. There’s a good amount of recognizable characteristics in Baig’s ghost story, from a message written in a foggy mirror to the sound of footsteps coming closer. The author makes them work in sheer abundance, with Adem relentlessly tormented by eerie individuals (sporting bloody-red eyes, for one) who inexplicably vanish. Recurring images set an ambivalent mood, like a candle holder rolling toward Adem or people heading into the “forbidden hallway,” signifying the house’s mysterious, off-limits left wing. Dialogue, however, is occasionally repetitive, with four different characters, for example, using the phrase “No worries.” Initially selfish, the protagonist at least feels guilty about choosing sex over his cousin, while the narrative provides sufficient resolution for all subplots, including Alp and the newfound romance between Adem and maid Maria.
A predominantly traditional ghost story, with enough apparitions to unnerve readers.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7103-2
Page Count: 168
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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