A heartwarming, hopeful tale about coping with autism.
A loving married couple must navigate the stresses and difficulties of raising an autistic child.
This debut novel tells the story of Beth and John MacFarlane, who meet and fall in love while in the same college music class. Beth, a pianist, and John, an aspiring engineer, continue to share a deep love of music throughout their married life, especially for Fauré’s Requiem, the piece that brought them together in class. The two even name their firstborn son Gabriel, after the composer, and Beth is amazed to discover that listening to the music is the only thing that calms her colicky son. Unfortunately, Gabe’s problems turn out to be much deeper than just having colic; at around 18 months, he becomes withdrawn, unwilling (or unable) to speak and make eye contact, and overly fascinated with trains—classic signs of autism. After receiving a diagnosis, the devastated parents begin the arduous and painful journey of trying to help Gabe. From behavioral training to different diets, the two draw on the many wells of support and resources around them to carve out a meaningful life for their son. Jepson (Changing the Course of Autism, 2007), who dedicates the novel to his two autistic sons, is a doctor active in autism research, and he clearly knows his subject. From the details of the behavioral therapy Gabe receives to the financial stresses of caring for a special needs child, Jepson gets the minutiae right. But, more remarkably, he also nails the emotional turmoil of living with the condition and the toll it takes on John and Beth’s marriage and their vision for their future. Some of the dialogue feels a little stilted; it is hard to imagine, in this century, a physician like the story’s Dr. Morrison, who advises, “I would recommend that you have more children and forget about this one.” In a world where celebrities from Temple Grandin to Jenny McCarthy invoke autism on a public stage, having characters say, “Like Rain Man?,” when they hear about Gabe’s condition feels woefully out of touch. But the heart and the emotional truth of this book, in the end, come through emphatically.
A heartwarming, hopeful tale about coping with autism.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5234-4876-0
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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