Slight but fun. A little misguided, though, since everyone knows the Rolling Stones are the walking undead.
In which the Fab Four reveal a fondness for munching on human brains in between gigs.
We’ve endured a flood of vampire books for the past few years, so it may be time to give zombies a chance to work their literary magic. Prolific ghostwriter and music journalist Goldsher (Modest Mouse: A Pretty Good Read, 2006, etc.) makes a reasonable case in this essentially trivial but entertaining novel, which posits that, way back in October 1940, the big cheese among a tribe of suppurating, gooey zombies that lived in the sewers of Liverpool stole newborn John Lennon away from his mother, Julia, and made him one of the bunch. Comments interlocutor and zombie-ologist Lyman Cosgrove: “Being that Lennon was all of five hours old when he was attacked by the First, I feel comfortable saying that the First used a spell on the baby rather than an assault.” Little Johnny knows no such niceties, and he quite capably takes his place among the Liverpudlian undead, who are the toppermost of the poppermost when it comes to the zombie pecking order—as Cosgrove notes, they’re skilled at hypnosis and telekinesis, and they can reattach any limb that happens to fall off, except for the heads. Now a young man and a veteran of a band that he wanted to call The Maggots (“I thought the Maggots was a brilliant name. Still do, actually”), John does a couple of big things: he resurrects Julia from the dead, and he recruits a sweet youth named Paul McCartney to help him take over the world—but not before making an unholy mess of his firm young flesh. And, with George (who, still a schoolboy, has to pester Paul to kill him) and Ringo, they take over the world, with no end of mayhem, giving new meaning to the notion of the primal scream. Goldsher turns in a classic rags-to-riches tale of aspiration and success that would do Horatio Alger proud, punctuated by no end of gore.
Slight but fun. A little misguided, though, since everyone knows the Rolling Stones are the walking undead.Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7792-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
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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