Small, but abundantly wise.
In her inimitable spare prose, Ernaux (A Man's Place, 1992, etc.)—like a medieval anatomist bent on finding the soul—dissects a love affair to discover the point of passion.
Divorced, with two grown-up sons, the nameless narrator—who, like Ernaux, is also writing her story—describes her year of passion, with the intention of translating into words ``the way in which his existence has affected my life.'' Her lover, also nameless, is a middle-aged businessman, married and posted temporarily to Paris from East Europe: ``From September last year,'' she writes, ``I did nothing else but wait for a man: for him to call me and come round to my place. I behaved in an artificial manner. The only actions involving willpower were all related to this man.'' She then goes on to detail her passion for this lover, who, resembling film star Alain Delon, took over her life. She reads newspaper articles about his country, chooses clothes that will please him, buys ``fruit and various delicacies'' for their evenings together. And, like others similarly in thrall, she admits to having ``no future other than the telephone call fixing our next appointment.'' Meanwhile, she continues to list the signs of passion as if that will help her grasp its reality. As the summer nears, she reluctantly takes a holiday in Florence, where in museums she sees only statues of naked men and works representing love. The affair ends when her lover is recalled to his own country, and the narrator details her responses—including avoidance of TV or magazines for ``they all show the same thing: a woman waiting for a man.'' Finally, an unexpected visit gives passion its true meaning—which ``is precisely to be meaningless,'' to teach us the luxury of ``being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.'' A stunning story, despite its detachment and the careful exclusions of any excess, that pulsates with the very passion Ernaux so truthfully describes.
Small, but abundantly wise.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1993
ISBN: 1-56858-003-7
Page Count: 72
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
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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