The musical references may strike a responsive chord, but the story of lost youth, midlife crises and rock-’n’-roll...
This rock-’n’-roll novel about the reunion of a New England garage band has a promising premise, but an off-key execution.
Scheft (The Ringer, 2002) has written for David Letterman and for Sports Illustrated (where he contributed a humor column until recently). In his second novel, which borrows its title from the hit by the Outsiders, he mines what is plainly a deep knowledge of and passion for the rock of the ’60s, when amateur bands were inspired by the British Invasion to make some musical excitement of their own. Within this era of “one-hit wonders,” Scheft’s novel concerns a no-hit band named the Truants, who formed in prep school and disbanded when they graduated, but not before investing a few grand in a vanity recording project resulting in a little-heard album. More than three decades later, well after most of the Truants have lost contact with each other, that album has somehow become a prized obscurity, reportedly worth $10,000 to at least one collector. As the Truants regroup to capitalize on their higher profile, the novel loses its rhythm to a bewildering array of subplots, some of which are absurd, few of which are as funny as Scheft likely intended. One of the former musicians is a gambler in way over his head; another is a barely closeted homosexual still working on his doctoral thesis; a third is an oversexed lawyer representing a fourth bandmate in a divorce. A sister of one of the bandmates provides some obligatory romantic complication. Though the novelist plainly has some affection for his characters, the reader doesn’t get the chance to develop the same, as the plot jumps from one episode to the next, while enveloping some real Boston musicians, including Peter Wolf from the J. Geils Band and Barry Tashian of The Remains.
The musical references may strike a responsive chord, but the story of lost youth, midlife crises and rock-’n’-roll redemption can’t keep the beat.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-079708-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
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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