Singer employs a light comic touch to this engaging second novel sure to appeal to romantics and animal lovers alike.
A cheating husband, dangerous horses, a dashing philanthropist and rescued elephants converge in this charming account of a woman’s recovery from a failed marriage.
Neelie’s always been a bit out of it, but when her husband’s veterinary partner calls to tell her she’s pregnant (and that would be thanks to Neelie’s husband Matt), Neelie retreats to the emotional safety of a box of jelly donuts. She soon discovers that Matt has closed their bank accounts and put a second mortgage on their house, leaving Neelie close to destitute, her income dependent on training difficult horses and the odd riding student. To make matters worse, Matt is trying to persuade Neelie he still loves her, that the affair was just one of those big mistakes. It’s been increasingly hard to get up in the morning, until friends who run a local wildlife sanctuary offer her the opportunity of a lifetime—travel Africa and rescue an injured elephant. Neelie takes on the challenge, and Matt assists with the project as well. The sanctuary and the rescue mission are financed by Thomas Princeton Pennington, a fairly impressive millionaire, at once rugged and sophisticated, who goes on the trek to supervise. When Neelie returns from Africa, it doesn’t take long for her to fall deeply in love—first with the elephant, Margo, and her baby, then with Tom, who’s taken a shine to Neelie as well. Singer (Horseplay, 2004), a horsewoman herself, as well as a foster mother to baby elephants, uses her expertise to deftly convey the passion Neelie has for the animals in her care, and the joy this kind of shared life can bring. On the human front, Neelie has a decision to make: Take Matt back, with all the comfort and certainty that offers, or consider Tom and a childless (his one demand) life of excitement.
Singer employs a light comic touch to this engaging second novel sure to appeal to romantics and animal lovers alike.Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2677-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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