A provocative romp that pits men against women and goddesses against God to remind us that lust is with us, maybe to the end...
When two Wiccan goddesses bring their unfettered sexuality and eco-feminist fervor to Atlantis Springs, Mont., the town’s ruling Christian patriarchy are unamused—until our witchy heroines expose what’s really going on under the local covers.
Anaya Godkin believes the world would be a healthier place if humans got over their bodily shame and men stopped contaminating and dominating the earth. Fired from her teaching position at a California university after instigating a nude protest against a biotech center, Anaya, along with her daughter, Naomi, head for eastern Montana, where they have inherited, of all things, a former house of ill repute. The two soon lock horns with the Priesthood, a cabal of biblically inspired yet brutal men, and attempt to liberate the town’s cowering children and sexually repressed wives from their shameful secrets and their twisted religious masters. Anaya the witch is not without heart, however, and soon embarks on a side mission to save one guilt-ridden minister from his conflicted nature and his moral hypocrisy. Torrid sex scenes alternate with philosophical reflections on the virtues of paganism and the repressive theologies that replaced it—to provocative, steamy effect. The author’s tarot deck may be overly stacked with cardboard villains and whores with hearts of gold, but her tale rips along as female avengers go about vanquishing stereotypical oppressors, among them Republicans, anti-abortionists and climate-change deniers. Meadowlark writes with ease and élan, paces her tale cleverly and doesn’t flinch from comparing today’s news about global warming to the Book of Revelation. In fact, she brings the Bible fully into the moral discussion, testing it critically against her dogged faith in Gaian wholeness and the healing powers of sacred sex. “What the world needs now,” she says, “are dangerous women, women who are moral enough to risk immorality.” This naughty novel takes those risks, with bite, craft and, of course, lots of sex.
A provocative romp that pits men against women and goddesses against God to remind us that lust is with us, maybe to the end of times.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-1460917121
Page Count: 412
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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