A superlative family saga that examines the concept of freedom in vividly dramatized personal and political terms, by a Puerto Rican novelist (The Youngest Doll, etc., not reviewed) whose smooth mastery of her ambitious materials is reminiscent of Gabriel Garc°a M†rquez at his very best. Wealthy importer Quintin Mendizabal discovers the manuscript of a novel his wife, Isabel Monfort, is writing about the histories of their entwined families. It's a chronicle of material enrichment and sexual exploitation, of familiar unhappiness and ethnic conflictin short, a microcosm of Puerto Rico's uncertain status throughout this century as an American commonwealth teetering uncertainly between the opposed poles of statehood and independence. As Quintin reads, he becomes increasingly disturbed to find, as he views things, that Isabel ``had made up incredible things about his family and left out much of what had really happened.'' He pens notes in the margins, questioning Isabel's conclusions and correcting her factual errors. Incredible events and brilliantly realized characters emerge from both their versionsincluding Quintin's father Buenaventura, a self-made man who may have colluded with the Germans during WW I; his maternal grandfather Aristides, a police chief whose dedication to the cause of statehood obliged him to murder his own people; and the Mendizabals' half-breed servant Petra, a rock indeed who outlasts several of their generations and lives to judge them all. The novel is a seamless web of plot, character, and haunting imagery (the lagoon on which the family's imposing mansion stands is itself dying, of industrial pollution). As the mingled love and hatred that bind Isabel and Quintin together rise to a painful crescendo, a plebiscite on the issue of statehood vs. independence reveals the flaws in the family's substructure, pitting parents against children, and provoking Isabel to take by force the independence she can never otherwise attain. Its triumphant conclusion seals their common fate and fulfills the aims of an overpowering novel that looks, at least on first reading, very like a masterpiece.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-17311-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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