A beautifully imagined, sympathetic portrait of a flawed icon.
Imagination meets biography in this novel about Cary Grant.
Young Archibald Alec Leach grows up a poor young lad in Bristol, England, with a father who drinks too much and a mother who suddenly and permanently disappears. He joins the Pender Troupe at age 14, working stage lights at the Hippodrome. When he comes to America, he quickly earns money by stilt walking and running a brief scam. Throughout much of the story the narrator calls him the Acrobat, and Leach himself may not know who he really is. He's incredibly handsome and fit for the movies. “The stage had only edged him up by inches,” the narrator writes, “but the movies paintbrushed him across the sky.” With his cleft chin and aren’t-you-glad-I’m-here smile, he is an instant hit on the big screen. There are those nasty rumors, of course, spawned by “the execrable” gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. What’s this about him living with a man? Doesn’t he like women? So on the advice of a producer, he finds a wife so they don't think he's “queer,” but she doesn't stay around long, and he eventually marries five times, with multiple extramarital tumbles in between. He likes women, all right, and men aren’t so bad either. The story moves back and forth in time, often with the aid of a psychiatrist’s couch and prescribed LSD, a “wonderful medication.” So who is this man, balanced on stilts and tumbling through life, landing on his feet, and dazzling with his grin? It can’t be Archibald Leach—that name falls flat. How about Cary Lockwood? Nah, too many syllables. How about Cary Grant? Yes, that will do. But his persona is a mask covering the insecurities and pain of his youth; he could easily have become like his hard-drinking father who pressed clothes for a living. Grant’s life is not the happily-ever-after film where hero and heroine kiss as the credits roll. Instead he is alone and frightened, desperate to be seen, to be heard, to be loved. On a journey with no destination, the Acrobat tumbles on.
A beautifully imagined, sympathetic portrait of a flawed icon.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-885983-03-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Turtle Point
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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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