Interesting philosophically and geopolitically, and a window on a world a hundred years gone: a distinctive tale still has...
Nearly a century after his death, five “lost” manuscripts of Verne are part of the SF master’s return to active publication (Invasion of the Sea, The Mysterious Island, both 2002).
This latest, first published in French in 1909 after being massively rewritten by Verne’s son Michel and now stripped to its original spare form, is an unabashedly speculative novel of civilization and nationhood, and a powerful man who yearns to be free from both. In Magellania, the archipelago forming the southernmost reach of South America, a primal scene occurs: a native stalks a wild guanaco and is pounced on by a jaguar, which is then shot by a mysterious but revered European, Kaw-djer, who arrived in the islands some years before. Kaw-djer takes the mauled native back to the man’s village in his longboat, but the man dies before they arrive. Saddened, Kaw-djer returns to the home on another island that he shares with the native channel pilot Karroly and his son, while the narrator explains the status of Magellania in the 1880s: territory as yet unclaimed by any nation, which is why Kaw-djer, who lives by the dictum “Neither God nor master,” has settled there. Unfortunately, Chile and Argentina soon lay claim to the region, and Kaw-djer, with nowhere else to go, in a gathering storm steers his boat to the island forming the southern tip of the archipelago, intending to throw himself into the sea. But a ship in distress gives him pause, and he and Karroly do what they can to save it; disabled and dismasted, it finally wrecks on a more sheltered island, where its cargo of hundreds of emigrants on their way to South Africa is mostly saved. The emigrants, from the US and Europe, winter over on the island, and, later, when a Chilean emissary offers to give the island to them if they’ll settle on it, they accept. Kaw-djer now has a place to remain free—but at a price.
Interesting philosophically and geopolitically, and a window on a world a hundred years gone: a distinctive tale still has the power to charm and provoke.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56649-179-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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