A page-turning mystery with a frustrating protagonist from a veteran storyteller.
A pathologically arrogant, wealthy young man sets off on a journey of self-discovery, family tragedy, and sexual conquest in Spencer’s modern California noir debut.
Oliver Bass, 17, has been expelled from his fancy San Francisco prep school for talking back to his teachers, despite his historically high grade-point average. In his emotionally cold Pacific Heights home, where Oliver exhaustively reminds readers that his parents didn’t hug him enough as a child, his psychotherapist stepmother Lorraine decides to send Oliver to live with one of her patients for the summer. She believes that Oliver and said patient, Vance Briggs, will help one another grow, as the teen is still recovering from the fact that his mother killed herself when he was 5, and investigative journalist Vance is grieving the suicide of his wife and the loss of his son, Alex, in a car accident. So Oliver goes to Venice, California, to meet the weed-smoking, light-beer–swilling Vance.Things get off to a murky start, as Oliver is threatened by an infamous Venice boardwalk vagrant and bats away a beautiful woman like a fly. Then Vance reveals that he thinks that his wife and Oliver’s mother were actually killed by others. This could simply be a whacked-out hunch, but then the two uncover a few clues, even as Oliver remains doubtful. Spencer is a former writer and producer of TV sitcoms such as 227 and Valerie, but his novel is cinematic—even sprawling. As a character, Oliver toes a curious line between Holden Caulfield and Philip Marlowe, but he’s leagues less likable than both. He’s articulate but piggishly sexist and full of contradictions; for example, he simultaneously possesses aggressive intolerance for Republicans and curiously hostile opinions regarding immigration. Halfway through, readers may question why they’ve agreed to follow this detestable boy’s journey—but they’ll undoubtedly finish it, as the story itself remains entertaining throughout.
A page-turning mystery with a frustrating protagonist from a veteran storyteller.Pub Date: March 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-85986-5
Page Count: 216
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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