Word: amanda
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...near his house. We meet his father Ivan, an astronomer whose obsession is to study the supernova in Chile, and his mother Polly, a professional photographer who feels as though she does not spend enough time with her children. And Hoffman also introduces us to the 11 year-old Amanda, whose goals are simple--to study gymnastics with Bela Karyouli and to have her braces...
...Risk, Amanda Farrell will not make it to puberty. Nothing wrenches so hard as the death of a child, and Hoffman knows just when and where to tug. Like Holleran, Hoffman (The Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter) is mainstreaming a refined literary talent. Her new novel is structured like a movie, which probably explains why 20th Century-Fox wasted no time buying the film rights...
...Massachusetts, populates it with wholesome families and engaging eccentrics. One young woman with modest paranormal powers seems like a character prewired for film directors who might want to plug in an occult package. But in the book she represents a sensitivity to mysteries of life and death that Amanda's family is too preoccupied to appreciate...
Hoffman gets the blend of hope and despair just right. She also conveys the social dimensions of childhood AIDS. The Farrells become pariahs: Amanda's friends and teammates shun her at their parents' insistence; her little brother Charlie gets cold-shouldered by his best friend; and her mother Polly gives up her free-lance photography business. On the up side, her father Ivan becomes friends with a terminally ill homosexual who is manning an AIDS hotline. Amanda's status as a potential gymnastic champion is more than a gimmick; it provides a standard by which her physical deterioration and emotional...
While Fox proves exceptional in his aspiring-writer persona, the other performances vary. Vacuous Phoebe Cates proves perfectly adequate to play vacuous Amanda, but Kiefer Sutherland is too awful to be believable as the awful Allagash. In the midst of all these city slickers. Tracy Pollan is a preppie breath of fresh air as a Princeton graduate student with whom Jamie spends a rare drug-free evening. Otherwise, it will come as no surprise that Oscar winning actress Dianne Wiest is competent as Jamie's beloved, bedridden mother, and Swoosie Kurtz is decent as what appears to be the only...