A meandering take on the repercussions of life in a fascinating era.
Ludington’s lushly descriptive and assured second novel ranges from California’s late-1960s counterculture to the pre-Covid-19 near present.
In 2017, two survivors of the ’60s, both veterans of prison stints, coexist uneasily in separate houses willed to them by a mutual friend on an estate in Beverly Hills. Pensive Daniel, 68, is best known for creating—and then blowing up—the elaborate art installation in the desert that gives the novel its title, though more recently, he has been working as a high school English teacher. Enigmatic, alcoholic Jack, 77, is supposed to be caring for his cherubic 6-year-old grandson, Dean, while Dean’s actress mother, Celia, “fresh out of rehab number two,” is off filming a movie, but Jack is so often distracted that the unsupervised Dean frequently wanders off to hang out with Daniel. As the novel fills in their backstories, it becomes clear that the lives of both men were shaped by visits to a Northern California commune, encounters with a cult leader, experiences with LSD, and a significant Grateful Dead concert, as well as by the death of a woman important to them both. The most affecting chapters deal with Daniel’s slow transformation and his recovery from tragedy through the creation of art, which is described in meticulous detail. But Ludington’s tendency to spend long stretches developing secondary characters—such as Daniel’s artist son or the multiple drug dealers Jack gets to know—only to drop them precipitously, slows the momentum of the novel, as does the grating reiteration of the sense of impending disaster experienced by nearly all the characters: Celia, for example, feels “a monolithic fear located behind her sternum” and “radioactive dread.” A rushed, violent, and confusing ending throws the otherwise meditative novel off-kilter, without resolving the many questions it raises.
A meandering take on the repercussions of life in a fascinating era.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781250288714
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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