An amusing, if drawn-out, satire of suburban life.
A modern-day twist on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary sets the story in small-town America.
Keech (A Hundred Veils, 2015) takes on a literary classic in this novel, which follows the romantic and social trials and tribulations of Emma Bovant and her husband, Charles. Emma is a suburban homemaker with professional aspirations; Charles is a caricature of the 21st-century social justice warrior, a tutor/social worker who struggles to make rent while insisting on buying organic food. Financial tensions between the two are simmering when Charles finds a new career goal and a potential sponsor. He decides to become a life coach to a wealthy local woman, Bea Doggit, who pays him $150 an hour for his services. Emma quickly becomes jealous of the relationship, professional or otherwise, developing between her husband and Bea; the first third of the book is mostly an account of romantic envy. Emma eventually realizes, however, that something larger is at play in her sphere. Bea, a realtor, is collaborating with a local pastor to push a major real estate deal through the small town. But for their plan to succeed, they must convince Andre Smyth, Charles’ friend from college, to sell his land along the river. Andre is the opposite of the local culture. Whereas Bea is a Bible-thumping, community-spirited denizen of the modern world, Andre is gay, Bohemian, and a self-avowed intellectual. As the reader realizes that Bea is manipulating Charles to exploit his friendship with Andre, Emma develops a sexual attraction to a man she can never have. Keech’s book never approaches the heights of Flaubert’s landmark novel, but it does cultivate a compelling sense of drama, especially when it focuses on the real estate plotline (At one point, Bea asks Charles for help with Andre: “We just think you might be the only one who can convince him to accept a fantastic price for his property”). Emma’s jealousy toward Bea, on the other hand, feels disproportionate early on, and readers may find her emotional struggle histrionic. Then again, the same could be said at times of Emma Bovary. This tale should please readers who enjoy romantic drama, and may be of interest to fans of Flaubert.
An amusing, if drawn-out, satire of suburban life.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9983805-4-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Real Nice Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2017
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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