A modest first effort in need of greater depth to ballast the weight of its subject.
A lackluster debut, written in the form of e-mails, attempts drama but simply illustrates through its own flatness the detachment of online relationships.
Forty-something Beth begins a quasi e-mail romance with her next-door neighbor after a chance meeting at the library. Her increasingly revelatory postings, which begin innocently enough, tell of her dulling marriage, the drudgery of driving her daughters to swim practice at five o’clock every morning, and her less-than-exhilarating profession of cataloguing quotes for desk calendars. Not an exciting life for Beth—or for the reader to share in. Then into her still-undiagnosed mid-age crisis comes Thomas, the neighbor in question. At first glance (all Beth really gets), he seems wonderfully breezy, spending much of his time out of town writing travel guides, but not the Morocco-Bali-Peru kind: his latest effort is a walking tour of Laughlin, Nevada. To Beth, however, Thomas seems the epitome of daring adventure, and the assorted sprigs of humor in the story are born from the inflated opinion she has of Thomas (only Beth’s e-mails are available, yet hints of Thomas’s personality can be gleaned from her responses to his). Although he e-mails her rarely, Beth writes constantly, going so far as to take a laptop on her first-ever sans-family vacation, a kind of Outward Bound for middle-aged women. She offers an almost instant replay of the day’s events, which challenge her physically and spiritually, presumably enabling her to find the goddess within. Well-intentioned, and at times quite prescient in the analysis of the holes women dig for themselves—Beth creates a quite obvious caretaker relationship with Thomas—Cook’s debut nonetheless plods. Even the surprise denouement isn’t enough to combat the doldrums Beth experiences and passes on to the reader.
A modest first effort in need of greater depth to ballast the weight of its subject.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-882593-32-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
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