Standard, appealing fare from Steel.
Steel's (Winners, 2013, etc.) latest contemporary romance targets the integrity of corporate executives.
Connecting two powerful CEOs through their children’s romantic involvement, the author uses her signature low-key, easy-to-read style to examine personal and professional morality. Fiona Carson and Marshall Weston have made it to the tops of their games with a lot of sweat equity, and both are respected leaders, but that’s where the similarities end. Fiona is an accomplished divorcée and the mother of two well-balanced college students. She makes accessibility to her son and daughter a priority and rationalizes that she doesn’t have room in her life for a man since her work and her children keep her busy and happy. When Pulitzer Prize winner Logan Smith, an investigative reporter, contacts Fiona for a story he’s working on, she sees him as a good match for her older sister, Jillian. After all, Jillian’s a psychiatrist who’s working on a book about women in power, and both Jillian and Logan believe successful women in the business world conduct themselves very differently from their male counterparts. Marshall seems to exemplify that difference. While Fiona’s a concerned parent and a by-the-book executive who would never compromise her principles, Marshall’s actions reflect his questionable ethics. Married for 27 years to the same woman, he’s been a decent provider to his wife and three children, and on the surface, he appears to achieve a perfect balance between family life and corporate duties. But looks can be deceiving. His eldest son despises him; his daughter’s on a dubious path; and Marshall’s hiding a secret life that threatens to harm the reputation of his company, destroy his marriage and damage others who depend on him. When he’s forced to make an important decision, Marshall’s loyalty to his company and loved ones is tested.
Standard, appealing fare from Steel.Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53091-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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