Carly is so brusque in the early chapters that readers may take a while to warm up to the spitfire heroine, but once her...
Rich (Ex and the Single Girl, 2005, etc.) whips up a beguiling twist on a well-tested plot in her romance about a straight-laced television producer who learns to loosen up.
An ace at capturing a good story, Tucson Today’s Carly McKay is a washout when it comes to her personal life. As a teen, she was forced to care for her two little sisters and her vulnerable father after Carly’s mother abandoned the family. She suppressed her resentment and bitterness for 15 years, until an assignment to profile Brandywine Seaver, a quiltmaker who professes to have psychic abilities, sets in motion events that shake Carly’s world. With the TV cameras rolling, Brandywine shares her special talents, explaining that she channels psychic energy while crafting quilts that, when finished, hold encrypted messages for their prospective owners. As Carly wraps the segment, Brandywine unexpectedly presents her with a quilt and a psychic reading. Everything in the producer’s life is about to change, she declares. Sure enough, Carly’s mom pops back into town. Her desire to pick up where she left off 15 years ago disturbs the fragile McKay family dynamic. Then Carly loses her job. Unemployed and confused, she lands on Brandywine’s doorstep demanding explanations. The psychic quilter offers few answers, but she does give Carly temporary shelter in an apartment on her property. Next-door neighbor Will, a sensitive artist, encourages Carly to share her feelings—very alien behavior for this tough lady. Naturally, she succumbs to Will’s charms and starts to adopt his open-minded approach to life.
Carly is so brusque in the early chapters that readers may take a while to warm up to the spitfire heroine, but once her tender side is exposed, it’s hard not to like her.Pub Date: March 6, 2007
ISBN: 0-451-22027-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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