Most dog-lovers (and many others) will be moved by Angus’s stories and adore being drowned in his sensibilities, which...
A memoir told telepathically by a dying Jack Russell terrier named Angus who’s owned by author Siebert (Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral, 1997) and his wife Bex, known herein as Huge-Head and Sweet-Voice, a questionable device when Angus the terrier knows many place names as well as the names of people he’s never met.
But one willingly suspends disbelief and allows Siebert all the latitude he needs to get his story underway. This tale, however, lies in the consciousness of an 11-month-old dog, making less for a great plot than for a series of episodes whose interest resides not in the action but rather in Siebert’s powers of recording Angus’s synesthetic sensation-thought-feelings. And the devilishly stubborn and willful Angus is a fabulously gifted telepathist who, with Siebert’s help, writes better than most of his listener-readers. The power of scent in a terrier has seldom been as strongly captured, though Siebert’s skill at this falls slightly short of Tolstoy’s affective power to enter animals’ minds (see “Strider: The Story of a Horse”), a comparison Siebert probably can live with. In England, Angus was taken from his mother at ten weeks by Huge-Head and Sweet-Voice, whose dog Lucy was deep into her last days. Quite amusing is Angus’s trip to Canada by a plane also carrying a rhino, horses, two emus, and a parrot. Unfortunately, his reckless character has him rushing out into the woods each evening, following scents, and when at times he doesn’t return, being sought by his owners. One night in the woods he’s attacked by a mysterious animal (a mother coyote protecting her pups). He tells us his adventures during his months in Canada while trying to drag himself back home, unable to answer the voices calling for him.
Most dog-lovers (and many others) will be moved by Angus’s stories and adore being drowned in his sensibilities, which Siebert invests with many powerful lyric moments indeed.Pub Date: May 2, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60494-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
