A meandering, cerebral work about a man clawing his way out of darkness.
A combat photographer seeks respite from his grief in Harkins’ novel of the Vietnam War, a sequel to The Big Buddha Bicycle Race (2018).
In 1972, U.S. Air Force cameraman Brendan Leary is in a military hospital in Thailand, recovering from injuries sustained in a deadly attack. Among the dead is Tukada, a Thai woman whom Leary loved. After he’s discharged, he’s depressed and haunted by strange visions: “It’s just a bunch of flashes—gunfire, the thumping of chopper blades, Tukada’s death rattle.” He tries to distract himself by teaching English, playing in a garage band, and exploring meditation with the help of a Buddhist monk.It isn’t long before he’s sent back up in the air, however. He experiences another brush with death when his gunship is downed over enemy territory, and he and a friend are the only ones to make it out alive. After a long ordeal involving capture by the North Vietnamese Army, Leary makes it to safety. But as he reaches the end of his rope, Buddhism and perhaps the love of a new woman may be the only things that can save him. Harkins’ prose is muscular and immersive, detailing Leary’s war experience with surprising imagery: “The engine exploded again and, like the tongue of a hungry dog, flames began lapping at the gash in the wing…suddenly we skidded sideways like an airborne hockey puck.” The novel marks an atypical entry in the annals of Vietnam War literature, as Leary isn’t a soldier, per se and isn’t stationed in Vietnam. It’s also a difficult book to enter cold, as it starts right where the previous novel left off, with little explanation, and some 16 different characters are introduced or referenced in the first four pages. Like many characters on spiritual quests, Leary can come off as a bit annoying at times, quoting Khalil Gibran and going on for way too long about his band. Overall, the narrative is slim and slow, and as a result, its readership may be narrowed to those who underwent similar disillusionment during the Vietnam era.
A meandering, cerebral work about a man clawing his way out of darkness.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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