It’s a treat to see Rachel back from her extended leave of absence since Sheer Gall (1996), and working such a meaty,...
Even in Missouri convicted murderers aren’t supposed to hog the profits from publicity about their crimes, so when Angela Green signs a contract to write a book after serving ten years in prison since killing her husband, Samantha Cummings, the gallery owner Michael Green had dumped her for, has other ideas: She files suit claiming that her son Trent, whom Michael intended to adopt, should get half of Angela’s royalties. It’s clearly a case for St. Louis attorney Rachel Gold—and just as clearly, Rachel will soon graduate from defending Angela in the civil case to unearthing evidence that maybe she didn’t kill her lawyer husband after all: the Rohypnol in her bloodstream that would explain her blackout on the murder night better than post-traumatic stress, the mysterious success Samantha’s had getting top dollar for the work of a mediocre painter, the X-rated videotapes linking certain City Hall insiders to an audacious money-laundering scheme. It’s a lucky thing for Rachel that the case unreels so smoothly, because she’s got troubles on the side. The wonderfully overripe redevelopment commissioner is about to lower the boom on her pet women’s shelter; she’s defending a couple of ostrich ranchers on a charge more outrageous than their profession; and she’s struggling to embrace the stringent Orthodox lifestyle of her true love. Not to worry: Everything, everything, works out fine.
It’s a treat to see Rachel back from her extended leave of absence since Sheer Gall (1996), and working such a meaty, satisfying case as this one, even if the darkest complications wind up with a tidiness improbable even for genre fiction.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-765-30218-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
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
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