A middle-aged man with secrets renovates a haunted house in this historical/mystical Western drama from Willerton (The Lady in White, 2012).
Combining the seemingly disparate themes of home repair and shamanic ghost stories, Willerton splits his novel between the tragic tale of the 19th century Mulvaney family and the modern-day redemption story of house restorer Tucker Whitby. Initially dismayed by the enormous size of the house, Tucker decides to buy the storied property from freshly divorced real estate agent Lynn Anderson after he realizes that the house is, in fact, alive. Built in 1869 by corrupt lawyer Cyrus Mulvaney, who later hanged himself from the rafters, the house was given sentience by an unnamed shaman. The mystery of the shaman’s identity is slowly revealed as Tucker and his crew of teenage construction workers restore it. When a pregnant teenager seeks asylum from her unhappy family, Tucker attempts to conquer his past emotional wounds so he can help her. The narrative engages because it embraces its mystical premise. When asked what it’s like to restore a haunted house, Tucker says without irony, “Building with a spirit-partner is something new, but it’s added a flavor to building that I’ve never had.” Like the Bob Villa of haunted houses, Tucker’s love for the project becomes a conduit for him to address the horrors of his own past. Oddly, the house acts as an occasional lovelorn narrator, adding insight into the mystical happenings. Each of the supporting characters wrestles with believable personal struggles, which illuminates their interactions with others. The descriptions of the restoration work, however, are perhaps too meticulously detailed, although restoration aficionados will undoubtedly relish the passages that describe how each section of the house is carefully brought back to life. Tucker’s emotional demons and the impromptu family he creates are fleshy enough to imbue the sanding, painting and rusty stud removal with genuine feeling.
A warm, sometimes overly described tale of a simultaneous restoration of a home and homeowner.
Pub Date: April 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615974026
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
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