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SEDUCTION OF A WANTON DREAMER

In dire need of edits but nonetheless an enthralling read rife with creativity.

Seduction of a Wanton Dreamer tells the story of Tony Fellows, a New Yorker whose life takes a sudden, sharp turn.

When his wife walks out on him, and a strike causes his managerial job at an opera house to go on hiatus, Tony is lost without any definite direction or purpose in life. He decides to decamp to Sag Harbor, Long Island, where he’ll write the next Great American Novel. However, a chance meeting with a mysterious and mystical woman named Loretta soon changes his plans, as she intends to lead him down a path of spiritual, artistic and sexual discovery–which includes self-exploration through vivid dreams and meditative states. As a result, the protagonist comes in contact with many complex and colorful characters that lead him to ruminate on the meaning of artistic expression and spirituality. Tony decides to make Loretta the focus of his novel in progress and attempts to solve the many mysteries surrounding this eccentric woman. He soon learns, however, that Loretta has been the muse and sexual partner for many other men following artistic pursuits–a discovery that, in addition to the return of Tony’s wife, puts their relationship in flux. When Loretta is sent away to a psychiatric home, Tony finds himself pursuing an even greater mystically charged mystery centering around the seemingly innocuous game of dominoes. While the story is undeniably captivating, it stretches on far too long. Each mystery Tony encounters opens up to an even larger mystery that finally climaxes with a spiritual puzzle, and the constant lack of resolution may frustrate some readers. Continuity and plausibility also are lacking in Beeson’s strange mystery. Still, readers will undoubtedly be drawn in by the appealing protagonist and the author’s descriptive writing, which makes vivid both physical scenery and the characters’ physicality.

In dire need of edits but nonetheless an enthralling read rife with creativity.

Pub Date: April 16, 2009

ISBN: 978-1-4392-0271-5

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

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THE ALCHEMIST

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

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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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