Hopeful but not saccharine, this novel offers a deeply sympathetic view of recovery from grief.
Caught stealing supplies from her workplace, a bereaved woman is given the choice to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or lose her job.
It’s been less than a year since tragedy struck Lucy Peterman: A car accident killed her husband and led to the miscarriage of what would have been her first child. She’s been soldiering on in her job as a reconstructive surgeon for women who have lost breasts to cancer. On the outside, she seems to be doing well; yet she can’t stop pilfering medical supplies and lifting small items from the grocery store. Lucy doesn’t understand it herself, as she explains to the hospital administrator who confronts her: “I don’t even know I’m taking it. I mean, I know I’m taking it, but it’s like I’m watching someone else and I can’t get her to stop.” To keep her job, Lucy must attend AA meetings, the best free choice for addressing compulsive behavior in her small town. She also follows instructions to get counseling, although “she found therapists to be overly personal people prone to making generalizations and wearing clogs.” Deeply skeptical—in denial, some would say—Lucy nevertheless makes connections in the group, especially after she adopts a stray dog. Slowly, Lucy comes to terms with her past and her new future. Garvin (On Maggie’s Watch, 2010) is insightful about grief and the pervasiveness of denial. Those familiar with 12-step programs will recognize the brand of tough love depicted here. With humor and compassion, Garvin shows how recovery depends on honesty—often with other people who share an addiction, whether to booze, drugs or shoplifting—and on helping others, whether stray dogs or stray people. Lucy’s current problems are well-accounted for; one character, a troubled teenager, is an excellent foil for Lucy to re-examine the privileges she has enjoyed and overlooked. Even minor characters are brought to life, such as the malaprop-prone supermarket clerk who has a crush on Lucy (and is given a respectful outcome).
Hopeful but not saccharine, this novel offers a deeply sympathetic view of recovery from grief.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0425269251
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2014
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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