In her popular books for young people, Blume has often worked empathically within a teen frame of reference; and here, though the prime focus is on the highs and histrionics of a trio of 40-ish, divorced professional women in Boulder, Colorado, it's their kids whose common-denominator fears and angers ring true. As for the mothers, they're a rather vacuous and tiresome lot: mother-of-two Margo (solar condo designer) counts up the 17 men she's slept with (including 21-year-old Eric) and has been divorced five years from Freddy, who wanted a Stepford Wife; real-estater Francine—a.k.a. "B.B."—lost her ten-year-old son in a car crash, divorced her journalist-husband, now clings to twelve-year-old daughter Sara; and oil heiress Clare is from Texas, with a philandering ex and a kid named Puffin. The women's men will criss-cross, of course. Thus, Margo is soaking in her hot-tub in her "funky upside down house" when Andrew, B.B.'s attractive ex, slides in on a neighborly visit; they'll soon be lovers. Meanwhile, fringe anorexic B.B., erstwhile friend of Margo, remains off-center with unresolved grief, her hate/need of Andrew, and traumatic family-past relationships: she's hovering near a breakdown. And, as Margo tries to juggle love, lust, and guilts, with B.B. dangerously raging and sulking, their children are adrift in the wake. Sara is slowly absorbed into the Margo/Andrew household—to the disgust of Margo's daughter Michelle, 17. Puffin becomes pregnant by Margo's son Stuart, and Michelle sees her through an abortion. Michelle has her first affair with Eric (Margo's Eric). The kids, often feeling "invisible," weather screaming fights, uprooting of their homes, and wonder why parents can't simply love them. ("You couldn't trust parents. They were only interested in you when they didn't have anyone else. As soon as they had lovers, forget it.") But finally, after B.B. has a near-fatal crackup, there's a flurry of upbeat fadeouts: B.B. is in therapy; Margo's kids, with Sara and Andrew, are beginning to coalesce into a family; there's a wedding in the works; and Margo, in her hot tub, counts her blessings. The kid-talk is convincing, even if the kids themselves are only moderately so. The adults, in or out of Jacuzzi, are flaky, arid, and just plain tiresome. But, like Blume's previous "adult" novel Wifey, this has enough glossy anguish to pull in her readership—with trendy-soap appeal to adolescents of all ages.
Pub Date: Feb. 22, 1983
ISBN: 0425206556
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1983
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
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
