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THE PROOF

Name: THE PROOF
Author: Ágota Kristóf
ISBN: 0-8021-1112-2

by Ágota Kristóf ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1991

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The brothers Grimm meet Kosinski's The Painted Bird in the Hungarian-born Kristof's latest installment of the lives of identical twins Lucas and Claus (The Notebook, 1988). Separated by the postwar Communist invasion of their unnamed Eastern European homeland, Lucas and Claus lead very different lives. Lucas, who chooses to stay behind and bear witness to the horrors of life under the regime, keeps journals that later become the only proof of his existence in a place dedicated to eradicating the individual. At first, an archetypical innocent trying to survive by doing good, he remains in a cottage on the border (a landscape as menacing as that of a Grimm tale) where his mother and baby sister died (their skeletons are literally in the attic). Here, he witnesses shootings, feeds a local priest, and takes in Yasmine and her deformed baby Mathias, the product of Yasmine's incestuous love affair with her father. Incest is a recurring theme, as is necrophilia: a brother rapes his dead sister, and Lucas himself has a long affair with a woman who resembles his dead mother. When Yasmine leaves to find her father, Lucas and Mathias move to town, but Mathias, increasingly unhappy at school and jealous of Lucas's friendship with another child, hangs himself. Haunted by Mathias's fear of abandonment, Lucas exhumes Mathias's body and keeps it in the house, but then mysteriously leaves, thereby missing twin-brother Claus, who turns up again years later and adds another chapter to Lucas's story. The authorities suggest that the entire text is fiction: ``since neither the events described nor the characters portrayed ever existed in the town of K.'' Powerful writing, disturbing images, but this survival theme has too many familiar antecedents, and sexual aberration as a metaphor of times out-of-joint is equally worn.

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Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-8021-1112-2

Page Count: 158

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ILLITERATE
by Ágota Kristóf ; translated by Nina Bogin

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.