Intriguing plotlines, but graphic descriptions of rape, torture and murder may deter many.
Chan’s (To Gain the Whole World, 2013) pulpy psychological thriller is not for the faint of heart.
Lucinda McConnell has held onto an image of The Boy Who Rescued Maximilian—her stuffed rabbit, Maximilian, that is, who fell over a fence at the zoo when Lucinda was a child—for most of her adult life, ever since she was kidnapped, raped and tortured for years shortly after the day at the zoo. The thought of this mysterious boy coming to rescue her from her physical and psychological pain has sustained her throughout difficult relationships and unsatisfying jobs, including her current gig at a law firm. So when Lucinda runs into a man in the elevator who claims to be her long lost childhood friend, she can’t help but hope. Penn is handsome, interesting and seems to want to get to the heart of Lucinda’s fears. But when her ex-boyfriend, Daniel, shows up with a story about a man who, in his search for new tales for his “story collection,” pumps him for information about Lucinda and then mysteriously moves in to her apartment building—Lucinda’s life begins to unravel. Every new friendship and every success she has at work seem to have been poisoned by her past and her relationship with Penn. After a tumultuous eight months, Lucinda breaks it off—and Penn commits suicide. But the nightmare isn’t over: Handsome, exotic Ronin moves into Lucinda’s apartment building and her heart, with catastrophic consequences. Author Chan has crafted a fast-paced, complicated thriller that is not short on twists. An efficient storyteller, Chan skillfully weaves together numerous plot threads. While the writing is decent and the dialogue believable, the gratuitous portrayals of the darkest side of humanity might be a bit much for those looking for a beach read.
Intriguing plotlines, but graphic descriptions of rape, torture and murder may deter many.Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1615729807
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Damnation Books, LLC.
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2013
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
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