A well-accomplished if downbeat debut.
Luminous debut collection by a former dancer with the Harkness Ballet in New York: a somber tour of the “kingdom of the dance” where bodies, loves, and lives are sacrificed to an art that often seems more punishment than reward.
Several of the pieces are about the same set of characters, while others are imaginative interpretations of the lives of such famous figures as Balanchine, Nureyev, Godunov, and Ashton. All are dark in mood, more like reports from a war zone—AIDS is pervasive, the women are anorexic, the men often drug addicted—than they are frothy tales of love and fame. The first, “Bugaku,” concerns a couple who become increasingly estranged as the woman wants to continue dancing while her burned-out lover feels there is more to life than ballet. In the notable “Don Quixote,” the renowned Balanchine recalls his obsession with prima ballerina Suzanne Farrell, whom he angrily fired for refusing to renounce her fellow dancer and lover, and in so doing nearly ruined his dance company. The title story uses the plot of Swan Lake to illuminate the dance and love triangle that develops when Lexa, who left Robbie—her dancer-lover and a drug addict—after he beat her up, only to return to find him having an affair with Sandra, the Queen of the Swans. Sandra is also the protagonist of “The Kingdom of the Shades,” in which she describes her breakdown after the end of her affair with Robbie and confesses her reluctance to dance again. Others pieces detail Nureyev’s incandescent partnership with Margot Fonteyn (“The Immortals: Margot Rudolf 4 Ever”); the recollections of a man, dying of AIDS, looking back over his life with a famous choreographer (“Departure”); and the regrets of a young woman who misses dancing, as well as being a part of the high caste of art that is ballet (“The Brahmins”).
A well-accomplished if downbeat debut.Pub Date: June 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50420-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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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