A lighthearted but outdated tale about keeping the counterculture alive.
Two artistic friends get pulled into an odd series of socially disruptive acts in this literary novel.
Harry Gnostopolos co-owns the Cabrillo with his girlfriend, Dana, in San Francisco’s foggy Richmond District. The independent movie theater is struggling financially, which is putting a strain on the couple’s relationship. Added to this is Harry’s recently developed gephyrophobia, a fear of bridges—ironic given his proximity to so many large ones. Dana is convinced this is just a new manifestation of Harry’s unwillingness to leave his beloved San Francisco, something that Dana is anxious to do. She’s also confounded as to why Harry, who made an Oscar-nominated Kerouac biopic right out of film school, never tried to make a second movie. Then Jackson Halifax reenters Harry’s life. A notorious author and bohemian Harry knew in his younger days. Jackson brings with him a Beats-obsessed Moroccan woman named Nadine Chakir, with whom Harry becomes infatuated at first glance. It turns out that Jackson is in need of a cash influx just as much as Harry is, and he has just the plan for how to get it. Jackson has connections to a mysterious woman named Madam X, who pays him to complete strange, high-profile tasks, such as dismantling all of the Facebook-installed speed cameras around San Francisco. Can they pull off this modern Merry Pranksters job in order to become financially solvent? And if they do, what even more earth-shattering tricks could they manage? Along with Jackson, Nadine, and a cabal of mysterious criminals, Harry may have the chance to strike back in the name of the bohemian San Francisco of his youth.
Janjigian’s tale is a buoyant pastiche, full of unexpected brawls, journeys, romances, and impassioned dialogues about life and art. There is a nostalgia for an earlier, bohemian time shared by the author and most of his characters, all of whom love the Beats, San Francisco, and romantic, itinerant lifestyles. But this enthusiasm comes across more as fandom for a thing than the thing itself, and the book is filled with passages like this one—about a former acquaintance of Harry’s—that ring thoroughly hollow: “Arsen had left San Francisco to follow a beautiful bipolar Spaniard whom he’d fallen tragically in love with. When things fell apart, he stayed in Barcelona trying to figure out his next move, with suicide on the table of options.” Jackson is a complete contrivance—the leader of a surrealist art movement who became a successful fiction writer, vineyard owner, boxer, and, finally, art thief. Harry loves him, and readers are supposed to love him as well. (Most will not.) To confirm how completely rooted the novel is in the mid-20th century, the book ends up with a deep dive into the real story behind President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. (All the more befuddling, as Harry and Jackson are supposed to be members of Generation X.) If this is the old San Francisco that has been lost to gentrification, many readers might rather peruse a novel about the tech industry.
A lighthearted but outdated tale about keeping the counterculture alive.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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