An action-packed and refreshingly innovative take on a popular genre.
In this theological thriller, a veteran police officer attempts to track down a peculiarly talented man suffering from amnesia who may be the key to the fate of the world.
Sgt. Alex Randall sees an “impossibly good looking” man meandering about aimlessly down a dead-end road. When he stops to check on his well-being, Randall discovers the man is suffering from radical amnesia. Not only does he not remember his own name, he seems to know virtually nothing about the world—he has to inquire what an ID is when asked to produce one. Randall decides to take him to Templeton Hall, a local psychiatric institute, where the stranger immediately charms the entire nursing staff—he’s so handsome, they name him Rex, Latin for king. Rex is visited at the hospital by an old man who warns him to flee—evil is fast approaching—and the next day, he’s disappeared and everyone at the facility, more than two dozen people, is found tortured and dead. Meanwhile, a man named Camael visits Randall and requests his help to find Rex—he’s willing to pay extravagant sums of money. He claims that Rex’s life is somehow wrapped up in the destiny of humanity, and despite the utter implausibility of his view, Randall is inclined to believe him and suspects he is an angel. Rex is preternaturally gifted at all things, and is recruited to become some kind of star—maybe a musician or a baseball player or actor—and is represented by Molly Simon, a photographer eager to capitalize on his infinite skills and marquee good looks. In his energetic novel, Carroll (The Horror Writer, 2017, etc.), a bestselling author and former journalist twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, artfully combines two genres—a hard-boiled detective mystery and a religion-infused tale about the end of the world. He blends the inventive with the stale, creating an unpredictable adventure within an all-too-familiar formula. But Randall’s character is a notable point of weakness—it’s hard to square his history as a policeman and soldier with his quick credulity. It’s remarkably early in the story when he confidently claims to Molly: “Make up your own mind…but to me it’s looking like a good versus evil thing.”
An action-packed and refreshingly innovative take on a popular genre.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9898269-6-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Swaggering Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
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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