Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...corruption within alternative medicine and that certain practitioners may not have the most principled of intentions. It is important to be critical and cautious when evaluating the efficacy of these therapies. At the same time, if one professes loyalty to the rigorous standards of modern science, one cannot dismiss novel alternative treatments as fake without first subjecting them to serious scientific scrutiny. Everyone involved must keep an open mind and resist the tendency to summarily reject alternative treatments which may initially appear strange, startling or implausible...
...think maybe sexual preference might have some potential in this regard. Wendy Wasserstein, the playwright, obviously does. She's been trying to get an adaptation of Stephen McCauley's novel The Object of My Affection off the ground for something like a decade. It offers a gay guy named George (Paul Rudd) getting jilted, taking a room with a straight woman named Nina (Jennifer Aniston) and having them fall into, yes, affection. On her part, though, that develops into something a little more intense, especially when she contrasts his sweetness to the abrasiveness of her straight lover, Vince (John Pankow...
...Crace's Quarantine (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 243 pages; $23) novelizes the Temptations of Christ, adding a plot bubbling with sin and a supporting cast of odd pilgrims. Crace, a British journalist turned novelist (The Gift of Stones, Continent), is not the first writer to take fictional liberties with Scripture. He won't be the last. But his new effort proves to be one of the more successful reimaginings. Readers and critics in Britain thought so: when Quarantine was published there last year, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award...
While Smiley's straightforward style may not be the best method of recounting the almost overwhelming challenges that Lidie faces (both physically and mentally), it keeps the book feeling genuine, and never once lets it digress into a cheap Western adventure-romance dime novel. The author relies a bit too heavily on powers of description, with enormous paragraphs dedicated to describing the finery (or lack thereof) around the heroine. But then again, such descriptions keep the authenticity of the book alive...
Other details of the novel add to its credibility. The quaint chapter titles--from "I Improve My Friendship with Mr. Newton" to "I Go Among the Enemy"--make the tone honest yet personable. The opening quotes to each chapter, from Lidie's beloved book A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home by Miss Catherine E. Beecher, adds a deliciously straight-faced irony to Lidie's own rather un-ladylike story. In addition, a mini-title that summarizes that page's subject in about five words or less is found at the top of every...