Morrall’s first, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker, handles the exploration of loss better than it does the rattle of...
The travails of a severely depressed young woman after the death of her baby.
See Kitty outside the school gates. Parents are picking up kids. Everything is yellow: for Kitty, yellow equals happiness. (Morrall leans hard on color imagery.) Now see Kitty sneak into the school. We realize her “yellow period” is more like mood indigo, for Kitty has no business here and has to beat a hasty retreat. Three years earlier, her womb had ruptured while she was pregnant with her first child, and she’s still in shock. “The world is made for children,” she thinks, “and without them you’re no one.” The 32-year-old Kitty and her husband James live in adjacent apartments in Birmingham, England. The odd arrangement satisfies Kitty’s need to grieve alone, though it disturbs James, who is loving but tight-lipped, unable to discuss their trauma. So child-husband and child-wife tiptoe around each other—though it’s the novel’s most important relationship and should have gotten more attention. But it competes for the spotlight with Kitty’s family across town: Her father Guy, a mildly bohemian artist, and a whole clump of older brothers, sisters-in-law and nieces. Kitty was raised by her father. Her mother died in a car accident when she was three and Kitty has an aching need to know more about her, but Guy and the brothers won’t talk. Then, surprise! Two dramatic revelations about her past devastate Kitty further and cause her to cross the line into a twilight world of delusions and lawlessness. She steals a baby from the hospital, then dumps it in favor of Megan, a runaway and pyromaniac. The two take an unhappy trip to the seaside before Kitty remembers to call home. A deadly fire at the end leaves Kitty essentially unchanged.
Morrall’s first, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker, handles the exploration of loss better than it does the rattle of family skeletons, but it’s still a drab, one-note affair.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-073445-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
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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