Eye-catching Victoria Gotti, daughter of Godfather John Gotti, debuts as an accomplished thriller writer. Does Gotti's first novel feature her ties to her father? Well, John Gotti is here, but only psychically, in the form of two characters in conflict with each other. In DeCiccio's Restaurant on Boston's wharf, union strongman Joseph Sessio (read: John Gotti) is shot twice through the head. The power vacuum is filled by distinguished Senator Frank Morgan of Massachusetts (read: John Gotti), who was ushered into prominence long years before with union money derived in part from his father's old ties with the union as a bootlegger (the union moved his booze). The heroine is blond Taylor Brooke, a serious young lawyer with a pricey Boston firm who is tapped to defend Tommy Washington, the 19-year-old black busboy accused of shooting Sessio. But word is out that the rubout was set up by Sessio's son Mike, who wanted to take over his father's empire. Taylor finds herself befriended by the handsome, sensual, art-fancying Sessio, who tells her that he doesn't believe Washington killed his father. Thus, the murdered man's son is helping the defending attorney get his falsely accused father's murderer acquitted, although this points the finger only more strongly at himself. Taylor's background: Her mother was abandoned by her married lover, Frank Morgan (before he became senator), then became the alcoholic victim of a vehicular homicide. Taylor was raised in a Catholic girls' orphanage in Fall River, married and then fled from an abusive husband, assumed a new identity in Boston and, her career secretly underwritten by her guilt-ridden father, became a lawyer. Now dad hopes to mend fences. But bad people and a car-bomber are out to kill Taylor, as is her knife-bearing husband. Surprisingly effective throughout, until the parricidal final pages, which fly by too fast for credibility even for melodrama. Flashy but powerful.
Pub Date: March 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86323-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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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