A mysterious medieval epistle, bumbling romantic efforts and plenty of feel-good spirituality combine to offer good...
Rabbi Kushner’s first novel for adults echoes The Gift of Asher Lev and The Da Vinci Code, but offers neither the former’s gravitas nor the latter’s intrigue.
Kalman Stern is a middle-aged, divorced scholar of Jewish mysticism. One of his most treasured possessions is an old book that a stranger in Safed, Israel, gave him. He finds in it a page glued inside the crumbling back cover, which appears to be both a kabalistic meditation and a love letter. Stern begins a search for the person who wrote the letter, and to find out what the letter means. He’s also on a personal quest. After years of lonely bachelorhood, he’s pursuing an astronomer who shares his interest in cosmology. The author interweaves Stern’s story with that of the letter-writer, a mystic in medieval Castile. Also strewn throughout are quasi–magical-realist asides in which Stern returns again and again to Safed. In each scene, the stranger who gave him the book (think Clarence, the ditzy angel in It’s a Wonderful Life) offers Stern new insight into the meaning of life and the shape of the universe, e.g., “The event horizon is not somewhere out there; it is homogenously distributed throughout all creation.” Kushner can be awfully didactic, as when he lets Stern lecture his date—and the reader—about “mystical monism” (the idea that “God is simply all there is”). Kushner also regularly interrupts the story’s flow with passages like, “Kabbalistic thought reached its zenith a century later with the appearance of what is now known as the Zohar.” Still, the hero’s likable quirkiness will hold many readers till the end.
A mysterious medieval epistle, bumbling romantic efforts and plenty of feel-good spirituality combine to offer good prospects for decent commercial, if not literary, success.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-7679-2412-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Morgan Road/Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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