A desperate tale of love and heroism, set mostly in Cambodia during the rise of the Khmer Rouge, from the Australian author of the novel and classic independent film The Year of Living Dangerously (1979). As the story opens in 1976, Mike Langford, a Tasmanian photojournalist whose war coverage has become internationally famous, is reported dead inside Cambodia. Almost simultaneously, back in peaceful Tasmania, Langford's oldest friend—known here only as Ray—receives a collection of tapes that Langford recorded over the years, an ``audio diary'' chronicling his career from his apprentice days in Singapore through his coverage of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian civil war that followed. Using the tapes, Ray tells his old friend's story, letting the tale fall into the third person even as he flies to Thailand to find out what happened. We never learn of Langford's fate with certainty, however, since Koch opts to transform him into a mythical figure, an eternal soldier. Part of Langford's tragedy is that in midlife he at last finds a woman he deeply loves, but she, like everything else that might have addressed the sorrow that he has borne since his terrible childhood, will be taken from him. She is Cambodian and opposes the Khmer Rouge; Langford probably perishes trying to extract her from danger. Also figuring prominently is Langford's Chinese friend Jim Feng, who reveres Langford for his fearlessness and honesty. Koch's Australian perspective is illuminating and fresh throughout, but his best scenes are inside Cambodia, as Langford tries to get the word out about the Khmer Rouge holocaust at a time when most Western journalists are in denial. The evocation of the Cambodian landscape, strewn with bodies, is truly haunting. Koch's complicated point of view seems mechanical at times, but on the whole he's given us an absorbing, deeply moving story. (First printing of 35,000; author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-86155-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
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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