Yet another good novel from Up North. Canadian fiction is more than coming into its own; it may be the wave of the immediate...
An immensely likable first US appearance for Canadian poet and novelist Gaston, who brings to engaging life the black-comic trials and tribulations of a former semipro hockey player contending with multiple sclerosis and (though he'd never call it this) separation anxiety.
Out of hockey at 40 and very much deserving his nickname, Bob "Loose" Bonaduce impulsively enrolls at the University of New Brunswick, planning to earn a master's degree in English (he's formally educated and a sometime poet) while reuniting with (and perhaps playing collegiate hockey alongside) his son, Jason. Gaston gives his narrator Bob an agreeable, attractive voice—wry, witty, and not about to be easily impressed—by the hilariously described graduate seminars he attends, the passel of much younger housemates he cohabits with, or the enervating disease that's slowly stalking him. The novel commands a broad range of scenes and effects. Brief flashbacks and terse excerpts from Bob's writing exercises (which rudely fictionalize the lives of various friends and acquaintances) mix seamlessly with the more extensive present action: Bob's hesitant overtures toward both Jason and his mother, Leah, whom Bob abandoned but never divorced; and his bonding with Leah's new mate, Oscar, a beautifully realized secondary character. Even better drawn is Bob himself, fully rounded and most appealing with his rugged fatalism, rough-hewn wit, and genuine love for the boy he walked away from. Jason is, Bob well knows, his best reason for fighting in the creases with MS: "because of this son's existence, life would never be empty." A few rock-music references and bar-hopping bits seem pretty generic, and the closing pages do not refrain from jerking a few tears, but, hey, if you liked the film Breaking Away, let's say, there's no reason to resist the many charms of Good Body.
Yet another good novel from Up North. Canadian fiction is more than coming into its own; it may be the wave of the immediate fictional future.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-039411-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
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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