A mostly breezy read that sheds light on one woman’s relatable struggle.
Debut author Holder offers a novel about an abused young mother’s quest to survive.
In June 1967, Liz Harmon tells her husband, the drunken Ron, that she’s leaving him. He responds violently, forcing her to flee with her two young children—bloodied, missing a tooth, and afraid. Fortunately, she’s able to move in with her boss, Lucille Frantz. Liz earns money dancing at a bar called The Jet, although after Ron’s attack, she’ll need to stay offstage until she heals. She wants to start a brand-new life without her husband in the picture, but she finds the prospect difficult—there are medical bills, lawyer’s fees, and the well-being of her kids to think about. Where will the money come from? How long will she be able to stay with Lucille? Meanwhile, Ron travels to Nashville to stay with his parents and try to turn his life around; as his father tells him, “If you want your family back, you have to get yourself right first. That means stop the drinking.” But his chances at success are anyone’s guess, and it seems sure that if he decides to come back to town, trouble won’t be far off. Family troubles are at the heart of this narrative that’s both recognizable and sprinkled with surprises. Readers will find themselves engaged by the fates of both the exotic dancer and her estranged, unpredictable husband. Liz lives a small-town, celibate existence for most of the book, but this eventually gives way to erotic scenes and travel to new places. The dialogue can be mundane at times, as when a mechanic goes through the play-by-play of replacing the spark plugs in Liz’s car. But despite such speedbumps, the book progresses quickly, showing that even the most impossible circumstances may have an exit.
A mostly breezy read that sheds light on one woman’s relatable struggle.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5390-2114-8
Page Count: 318
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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