Ambitious, on occasion accomplished, but the question is still: Why?
British author Barnard (Poker Face, not reviewed) offers an anemic study of a young woman’s growing involvement in the world of London strip clubs.
Why does Belle George want to be a stripper? Take your pick: (1) She may be a lesbian and hopes that overexposure to female flesh will decrease her desire; (2) Ungainly and unfeminine, she thinks working as a costumed dancer might cure her oafishness; (3) She wants to be in show business like her glamorous mother, who hosts a popular television program; or (4) She’s an emotional masochist. Unfortunately, none of these explanations is explored in any depth, making it rather unlikely that a naive, upper-class young woman would suddenly decide on a career even her fellow strippers want to escape. As the narrative begins, Belle auditions at Xanadu with Sylvie, a teenager who hopes a brief stint at the strip club will garner her the union card she needs to pursue a proper acting career. Since Sylvie has nowhere to go, Belle takes the girl to her roach-infested flat, hoping they’ll become best friends. The two go to rehearsals, and Belle gradually improves, eagerly awaiting the day when she will graduate from the burlesque chorus to her own solo strip routine. But the on-the-job camaraderie she wished for never materializes; the other strippers view her as a poser who has better options but chooses to slum it for fun. She sexually pursues her boss and is puzzled when nothing comes from her obvious advances. Finally, it’s apparent that there’s only one explanation for Belle’s inability to reflect on her circumstances or interact with those around her: she’s just not very bright. Barnard’s portrait of the strip-club subculture is fascinating, as is her exploration of Belle’s co-dependent relationship with her successful mother, but these qualities simply can't overcome a poorly drawn lead character.
Ambitious, on occasion accomplished, but the question is still: Why?Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2001
ISBN: 1-86049-551-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Virago/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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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