Giggle in your seat or be so mesmerized you miss your stop.
Shopaholic Takes Manhattan**While the narrative is lighthearted and often hilarious in tone, Becky’s addiction is taken quite seriously. She writes constantly to her bank manager, asking to extend her overdraft, each time justifying the need to shop both to herself and the bank manager. Through humor, Kinsella tells the tale of the junkie: falling off the wagon leads to a relapse, a crisis and, finally, to reconciliation.
While Kinsella’s descriptions are sufficient, she does not turn language into art. Her story is entertaining, and in that way successful, but it lacks refinement. You’ll laugh, but you won’t call it great literature. Save this one for a rainy Sunday afternoon.
The Alchemist****
by Donna Boyd
Ballantine, 2002
During the first pages of The Alchemist by Donna Boyd, one has the dreadful suspicion that this is going to be another Anne Rice novel, à la Interview with the Vampire. Luckily, after the first few pages, it is quite clear that there will be no hedonistic, childish vampires wandering the streets of New Orleans here. This is the tale of an immortal alchemist from ancient Egypt, who, to save his own sanity, has decided to tell his 4,000-year-old story to a modern-day psychologist.
Boyd’s descriptive powers are impressive; scenes are described eloquently and compellingly, but never overdone. She has created a story that draws the reader in, and makes the book almost impossible to put down. Instead of boring the reader with unimportant historical details, which probably wouldn’t be completely accurate anyway, Boyd tends to gloss over them—the main character is several thousand years old, and shouldn’t be expected to remember absolutely everything, right? Without the useless “clutter” the story is allowed to shine through. That the book is set in Egypt is of little or no consequence. What matters more is that these events came to pass a long time ago. A thoroughly fascinating tale of intrigue and the supernatural, The Alchemist’s only shortcoming is that it ends too soon.
On the author: The best-selling author of over one hundred mystery and suspense novels, Donna Boyd has published under a variety of names, such as Rebecca Flanders, Donna Bell and Taylor Brady. She has been primarily influenced by Dean Koontz, but also enjoys reading the works of John Grisham, Jonathon Kellerman and Patricia Cornwell. On her love of mythical creatures, she says: “We share this planet with hundreds of other species; it’s time some of them got the credit they deserve.”
