A dark, unsettling character study.
A young man proves to be a quick learner when it comes to killing and drug trafficking in Darby’s (The Beacon Brothers, 2017, etc.) rural crime novel.
Seth, a Midwestern farmworker, crouches in waist-high corn as he witnesses a stranger kill another man. The fearful young man stays hunkered down for hours, then runs to his truck only to find the killer sitting in it. He demands that Seth drive him first to Kansas City to connect with his cohort Vienna (“Like the sausages”) and then, eventually, to Montana. But first, he wants him to help load not one, but two bodies into the truck. Although initially Seth tries to escape from the unnamed murderer, he soon demonstrates a knack for doing his bidding, and he finds that he likes the money that the man pays him. Eventually, the man convinces Seth to permanently lock an associate in a shipping container and, later still, to kill someone. Once in Montana, Seth and the man’s other underlings (including Isabel, who’s “Indian, maybe a little bit Mexican” and very interesting to Seth) are tasked with traveling the Missouri River for two months in canoes packed with ketamine for a drug deal. For good reason, Seth is wary of his fellow drug traffickers; he also knows the man will kill him, like he killed others, if he disappoints him. Darby excels at describing details, identifying farm weeds as “mare’s tail” and “volunteer wheat,” noting the “plastic-on-plastic clicking sound” of playing video games, and remarking on the “fuzzy yellow cover on the toilet seat” in a low-rent house. The characterization throughout is strong and the pacing is good, with scenes of violence offset by those of the gang having a few beers, cooking spaghetti sauce, and sharing pizza. The yin and yang of loyalty and betrayal run through the novel until its disturbing end.
A dark, unsettling character study.Pub Date: May 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5212-5281-9
Page Count: 315
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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