The array of storylines almost turns the novel into a soap opera, but a decisively good one, and the presence of alligators...
In Gallagher’s (The Money Doctor’s Guide to Taking Care of Yourself When No One Else Will, 2005, etc.) thriller, an ex–volunteer sheriff and former head of a business school searches for an animal hunting community members but finds himself the target of an escaped convict.
When a severed hand is found in Harmony Lakes, Texas, volunteer fire department Chief Mark Hunter deduces that the victim is his friend Billy. Both Mark and law enforcement suspect an accident or an animal attack—alligator, python, maybe even Big Foot—but soon realize that there could be a human killer on the loose. In particular, prison escapee Leroy Payne, who was serving a 25-year stint for murdering his abusive father, blames Mark for his incarceration. Gallagher’s novel has an unmistakable religious theme: Mark, a devout believer, often reads biblical passages; there are a few snake attacks; the giant gator, which readers find out early on is the killer, is more than once referred to as a “demon”; and Mark even performs an impromptu exorcism on someone apparently possessed. Fortunately, the religious bent is aptly integrated without engulfing the story; most noticeably, Mark and his equally religious wife, Reggie, are burdened with human flaws. Reggie, it seems, is jealous of any woman who has contact with Mark, and her husband, upon hearing of the man who tried to force himself on Reggie, threatens to castrate and kill the aggressor. Numerous subplots run throughout the narrative, and Gallagher excels at giving them solid coverage—perhaps too well, since the two main plots sit on the sidelines during a funeral, Mark’s counseling a rich widow whose husband was a pal, an attempt to blackmail a community mogul, and, for good measure, an affair and suicide. The treatment of female characters is a bit antiquated, too: Reggie is a housewife who always has dinner ready; a professional woman, Dr. Candace Thompson, brought in for her expertise in reptiles, does little more than turn men’s heads and incite Reggie’s envy; and Rodé, given a fascinating background as a bareback rider and the first female rodeo announcer in Texas, is now merely Mark’s secretary. It’s difficult not to cringe when Mark mockingly praises her with a pat on the head, even if it’s in jest.
The array of storylines almost turns the novel into a soap opera, but a decisively good one, and the presence of alligators and angry killers will satisfy genre fans.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0988724129
Page Count: 356
Publisher: InCahoots Film Entertainment LLC.
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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