Another absorbing, albeit low-key foray into the world of Orthodox Jews, by the author of two story collections: Total Immersion (1989) and The Family Markowitz (1996). Covering two years (1976—78) in the life of the devout community led by Rav Elijah Kirshner, Goodman chronicles spiritual and psychological journeys taken by various group members. The principal events occur in the Kirshners’ summer retreat, the upstate town of Kaaterskill, with a few key scenes in their New York City neighborhood of Washington Heights. Model Orthodox wife and mother Elizabeth Shulman has always found the Rav’s strict laws as natural as the air she breathes, but now her experiences running a kosher store in Kaaterskill expose tensions between Orthodox Judaism’s strictly defined role for women and Elizabeth’s ambitions for herself and her daughters. As the Rav’s health worsens, he softens toward his apostate son, scholarly, skeptical Jeremy, to the distress of long-suffering Isaiah, who has spent years as their father’s unthanked amanuensis and putative but unacknowledged successor. Conflicts also simmer between Andras Melish, whose primary loyalty is to his elderly sisters, and his much younger wife, Nina; between the determined-to-be-pious Nina and their rebellious daughter, Renee; and in the breast of Elizabeth’s daughter Chani, fascinated by modern Israel even though the Kirshners don—t consider it a true Jewish homeland. Though all Goodman’s people are believably complex and emotionally engaging, the best character here is the surprisingly cynical Rav himself, slightly contemptuous of disciples who lack his grounding in the more worldly culture of pre-Holocaust Europe. Subplots involving Kaaterskill’s Yankee residents and a local real estate developer are less interesting, and, as in The Family Markowitz, Goodman doesn’t develop much narrative momentum. The only really dramatic moment comes when Elizabeth loses rabbinical permission to operate her store; otherwise the author relies on quiet moments of tentative reconciliation to wrap up her story. You don’t read Goodman for thrills, but for rich characterizations and faultless evocation of a cloistered culture—pleasures in ample supply here.
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32839-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
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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