Maybe overwriting is the only way to handle the end of civilization. Seems to work here.
Anthropologists open Pandora’s box in South Dakota.
First-novelist Johnson, author of one of last year’s most impressive story collections (Emporium), has his wry way with the ecosystem, the breakdown of law, frontier universities, families, and other complexities in this very busy, highly original, largely entertaining, and occasionally maddening take on environmental disaster. Tenured but shaky one-book wonder Hank Hannah, professor of anthropology, fitfully labors in the spectacular disorder of his collected samples of ice cores, atmospheric layers, and other snips of the universe at the University of Southwestern South Dakota. Pining for his late stepmother, lazily lusting after Trudy, one of his two prize grad students, going not much of anywhere in his study of the early American Clovis people who may have wiped out most of the hemisphere’s megafauna twelve millennia ago, Hank more or less oversees the studies of Eggers, his other grad student. Eggers has wowed the anthropological community with his ambitious doctoral project, a year spent living with nothing but Clovis technology right in the middle of the otherwise featureless campus-on-the-steppe. Clad in fur clothing of his own tailoring, chowing down on the campus squirrels, scratching constantly from plagues of worms and insects, Eggers, the child of billionaires, has continued his studies alongside the conventional student body, and in so doing has unearthed the supreme rarity: a Clovis burial site on the fringe of one of those unspeakably garish Indian casinos. Interrupted by, among other things, an attack of Pomeranians, Trudy and Hank assist with the dig, eventually unearthing all of the troubles of the world. No kidding. A prize pig will be murdered, Hank will become gobsmacked by love for a Siberian plant paleontologist, Trudy will sink two automobiles, the Pomeranians will become sled dogs, and Hank will go to federal prison on the way to the Apocalypse. Johnson manages somehow to squeeze in some very tender observations about childhood and loss in the midst of this weird and ominous avalanche.
Maybe overwriting is the only way to handle the end of civilization. Seems to work here.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-670-03235-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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