Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. Occasional interesting tidbits about the novel’s setting, the French-speaking Swiss canton of Vaud, are not enough to redeem the pervasive mawkishness.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent.
Along the way to this realization, Coelho milks each opportunity to preach-by way of endless interior monologues, quotes from Scripture and talky scenes-sermons about love, marriage, sexual attraction, evolutionary theory and every other imponderable he can muster. After a close call-Jacob’s astute spouse almost exposes her-Linda decides that the fling isn't worth destroying lives over, as if these shallow existences were under any threat to begin with. Her bafflement is shared by the reader, who will be puzzled by the total lack of any convincing reason why she should be so infatuated with Jacob, who, in addition to being very thinly portrayed, apparently can’t decide whether his amorous strategy should be sensitive and romantic or something 50 or so shades greyer. After briefly trying therapy, she consults a Cuban shaman, to no avail (except to generate a successful series of in-depth features on occult healing). Her adulterous behavior disturbs her, however, since she can't explain her own motives. The ensuing affair jolts Linda out of the low-grade depression she has been experiencing despite her enviable lifestyle. When she interviews Jacob, a former flame from school days who's now a rising politician, Linda behaves professionally right until she administers a parting blow job. The vicissitudes of domestic life aren’t Coelho’s concern unless they offer a pretext for platitudes about the eternal verities and The Things That Matter. The couple is blessed with beautiful and well-behaved children, at least from what we see of the progeny, which isn’t much. Linda, a respected newspaper reporter in Geneva, is happily married to a handsome, wealthy and generous financier. A Swiss journalist strives to redress the meaninglessness of her life with even more meaningless sexual encounters in Coelho’s latest pseudo-philosophical screed.
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