The Other Adonis: A Novel of Reincarnation

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful story!
Review: An uniquely imaginative love story / mystery where science, religion and art collide with a more mystical world. Part new age, part time travel, threads of reincarnation mixed with art history. While the author presents us with some highly provocative and creative scenarios, he really doesn't "get" his women characters, whose reality seems to be either the pages of Cosmo or perhaps the fantasies of an adolescent. Specifically, do you know ANY women friends who think they have a fine butt?

Obvious flaws aside, the book did teach me a great deal about Rubens, and I think the story worked in a very peculiar and thought provoking way. Mr. Defore paints quite a landscape and sense of place, and has a distinctive perspective on happily ever after ....

Rating:
Summary: Play it Again Bucky
Review: An uniquely imaginative love story / mystery where science, religion and art collide with a more mystical world. Part new age, part time travel, threads of reincarnation mixed with art history. While the author presents us with some highly provocative and creative scenarios, he really doesn't "get" his women characters, whose reality seems to be either the pages of Cosmo or perhaps the fantasies of an adolescent. Specifically, do you know ANY women friends who think they have a fine butt?

Obvious flaws aside, the book did teach me a great deal about Rubens, and I think the story worked in a very peculiar and thought provoking way. Mr. Defore paints quite a landscape and sense of place, and has a distinctive perspective on happily ever after ....

Rating:
Summary: Nicely written page turner
Review: I had never heard of Frank DeFord. My father bought this book as a Christmas gift for my husband, thinking it would be about sports. I had no intention of reading it, but when you're home with the flu, what do you do? Well, you read for 7 hours straight because you can't stop. Even if the characters were a little bit two dimensional (not Nina and Hugh as much as Bucky and Constance), the story of love transcending lifetimes was intriguing and fresh. It has something for everyone--romance, action, mystery, mythology, history, spirited debate and religion. This is a love story above all, but it's a thinking person's love story.

My biggest complaint is that we never got to find out who Hugh and Nina were in their past lives--though after what they went through, I can understand them not wanting to open that can of worms. This book will make you wonder if you have found your soul-mate, or if they are half a continent away.

Rating:
Summary: A real page-turner
Review: I love Frank DeFord on NPR (though I am NO sports fan) so when I heard he'd written a novel I got this for my husband for Christmas. Unfortunately for him he hasn't had a chance to get his hands on it because I cannot put it down. This is a true page-turner, you will love it from start to finish. The characters are likable, and engage in realistic conversations. The twists and turns keep you involved as does the whole theme of reincarnation. Get it you'll love it.

Rating:
Summary: The Love of a Lifetime
Review: I saw The Early Show and upon hearing what the book was about, I decided to buy it. Well I couldn't put the book down. Being a passionate and romantic woman, I found it extrodinary that a man could somehow put these types of feelings into words. The idea that there is someone..THAT someone...out there who is meant for you and only you...and that someway...somehow.. you two manage to beat the odds and find each other.

I felt like i was thrusted in the midst of the lives of two couples coming to grips with love and whether or not life is worth being without their "soulmate". It is interesting to see the men deal with a love that not only frees them but at the same time torments them.

The mix of religion and love were a good combo. Many people believe in an afterlife ...but few in the Western culture believe in a life before this one. How many times have we met someone and instantly felt like we've known them for years? Have you ever had the pleasure of having someone touch you and realize that this is a familiar feeling inspite of the fact that the mind can recall no images and the memory has no prior knowledge of ever meeting this person?

Love is the most powerful emotion, and to think that it could be eternal is not really that hard since we think that we will see our loved ones again after they have left us here on this Earth.

Frank found a way to incoporate the hopes and fears as well as the promises and disappointments with loving someone in a way that any person can relate to.

I recommend this book to anyone who has ever believed in the notion of a soulmate and to anyone who believes that the power of love can not only transform a soul but transend a lifetime.

I myself have never seen silver, but heres hoping that someday I will.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful story!
Review: I truly recommend this book. I gave it as a Christmas present this year to some friends who also loved it very much!!! You can't go wrong with this story even if you aren't a fan of reincarnation (which I'm not) you will still love the story and appreciate that it is well written.

Rating:
Summary: Bridey Murphy Reborn
Review: This "novel of reincarnation" rests on a premise -- that soulmates are not only reborn as soulmates every few hundred years, but when exposed to images of their past lives, mysteriously become their past lives -- that many readers will find too thin to support the plot.

The central characters -- a distracted, lovestruck, but somehow successful middle-aged psychiatrist with a marvelous bottom; a guilt-ridden Lutheran cleric whose history of sexual exploits, and amazing candor about them, rivals Wilt Chamberlain's; a voluptuous securities analyst whose horseback-riding and clothes-selection skills are slightly, well, mannish; and a sweet and sensitive advertising salesman in search of a good hypnotic trance -- lack credibility and appeal. The mystery they play out lacks clues, false leads, more than one major twist, and other tricks of the trade. The backdrop of historic Antwerp, the studio of Peter Paul Rubens, and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art could have been richer.

Frank Deford creates two marvelous characters who emerge through hypnotic suggestion -- a reckless English sailor with the physique, and possibly the demeanor, of a running back on academic probation, and a demure Flemish housewife stepping out on her husband -- and there is a nice chase scene at the end. These touches improve, but do not recommend, "The Other Adonis."

Rating:
Summary: Even if you're not into reincarnation...
Review: This was a good book. Finished it in one weekend because I could not put it down; I had to find out what happened. There were more twists and turns than I was expecting after reading the inside flap description. Don't really like books about reincarnation, but this was a very interesting book. I liked the characters and the plot was more complex than I thought it would be. This was the first book I've read by Deford, and I'm looking forward to reading another.