Either DeBartolo’s satire is very subtle or this is the most pretentious novel about rock music ever written.
A rock journalist sacrifices her relationship with a brilliant rock musician when her fear of flying threatens to hold back his career.
DeBartolo (The God-Shaped Hole, 2001) treats rock music as high art in this self-important romance. After landing an interview with her idol, legendary rocker Doug Blackman, fledgling journalist Eliza Caelum moves to Manhattan to take a job with a music magazine. She finds herself sharing an apartment with Paul Hudson, lead singer of the band Bananafish, who takes his music very seriously and loves the same Doug Blackman song as she: “The Day I Became a Ghost” (Blackman’s no Dylan, or even Dave Mathews.) Soon, Paul and Eliza have fallen deeply in love. Paul’s talent begins to bring the band attention both from an independent producer and from a mega-corporate record company. Drawn to the independent, Paul nevertheless signs with the corporate jerks for the sake of his fellow band members’ financial interest. Despite his own misgivings about becoming a sellout, Eliza is thrilled for him. He, in turn, proposes marriage and wants her to accompany him on tour. Unfortunately, that would entail flying. Her airplane phobia began when her parents died in a plane crash and intensified after she witnessed the 9/11 attack. Not about to let her unwillingness to fly derail Paul’s career, she lets Doug Blackman’s son Loring, a handsome mainstream musician (i.e., sellout) with an obvious crush on her, kiss her when she knows Paul will see them. As expected, Paul assumes the worst. He goes on tour alone and sleeps with a groupie. Eliza moves in with Loring while pining for Paul and his pure rock-’n’-roll soul. Paul’s album bombs because it isn’t commercial enough. Paul and Eliza reunite and make love. Paul commits suicide. Or does he.
Either DeBartolo’s satire is very subtle or this is the most pretentious novel about rock music ever written.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-4022-0521-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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