Interesting vignettes, but this novel never feels whole. Though billed as women’s fiction, the book will be of more interest...
A teenage girl spends short stints in London, Ghana and the United States with various family members.
Lila, 15, lives with her divorced mother in London. Her absent father has his own family in the States, leaving Lila and her mother to lean heavily on each other for company and support. This makes her mother’s sudden decision to ship Lila off to Ghana and unload her onto Auntie Irene all the more shocking. Lila’s mother proves to be selfish, immature, impossible to empathize with and difficult to believe in as a character. Lila’s time at Ghanaian boarding school is striking—details like the struggle to find drinking water, eating before flies settle on the food and learning to sweep with a reed broom paint a true picture of African life. Unfortunately, just as we are settling into the developing world, Lila is called back to London. Just as quickly, she is sent to the States for an odd Disneyland vacation with her father and his Christian sing-along family, who are strangers to Lila. Time and again Lila is uprooted so quickly that the narrative cannot keep up emotionally. The effort to depict people and places seems wasted, as each time we become invested in a place and a lifestyle, we are promptly plucked out and moved. Though this mirrors Lila’s efforts to comprehend her kaleidoscope life, readers will only find themselves rushed, not pensive, and left without any literary or emotional payoff. Lila’s narrative is a mix of tragedies and blessings, but the end is wrapped up in a neat, barely credible ribbon that is tied just as hastily as the book’s other chapters. Readers will recognize that Lila has been given short shrift by the adults in her unstable life, but they may never figure out the reason for journeying with her.
Interesting vignettes, but this novel never feels whole. Though billed as women’s fiction, the book will be of more interest to younger readers.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-2610-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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