bookshelf

HIWASSEE

Name: HIWASSEE
Author: Charles F. Price
ISBN: 0-89733-429-9

by Charles F. Price ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1996

bookshelf

A grim, convincing, remarkably assured first novel about the darker byways of the Civil War. Set largely in the isolated mountains and fertile valleys of western North Carolina, Price's story follows the struggles of the once wealthy Curtis family in 1863 to survive one more year of war. Madison Curtis, an influential planter before secession, is a man increasingly hard-pressed by circumstance. His three sons, Howell, Jack, and Andy, are all in the Confederate Army. His daughters are without husbands. The fertile land goes untilled. His considerable holdings of livestock have been depleted by raids from several violent local clans. And then a raiding party claiming to be Union soldiers, but actually a band of thieves, deserters, and psychopathic thugs, rides up to his door. Throughout, freelance writer Price, brings an astonishing verisimilitude to the narrative. The salty, exact language, tough-minded views, hard lives, and bloody deeds of these characters ring true throughout. Behind the lines in Price's South, the law is largely nonexistent. Bandits of every description prowl the backwoods, along with deserters, those attempting to avoid conscription (the draft was as unpopular in the South as in the North), and contending forces of Union and Confederate troops prone to shoot first and ask questions later. There are many small, confused skirmishes, ambushes, and atrocities. Price moves back and forth between the sufferings of the Curtis family and the experiences of their boys at the battle of Chickamauga, an inconclusive Confederate victory. One of the boys, watching the vast numbers of men charging forward, thinks ``How huge and without pity'' the thing ``about to consume him'' now appeared. Price excels in catching the plight of individuals caught up in this vast event. The prose is occasionally too ripely folkloric, the structure, shuttling back and forth between characters, sometimes confusing, and the ending needlessly abrupt. But few recent novels have caught with such conviction the true texture and profound emotions of that conflict.

Pub Date: June 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-89733-429-9

Page Count: 197

Publisher: Academy Chicago

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

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.

bookshelf

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.