The prolific British author of historical romances (Fleur, 1993, etc.) and the Bill Slider mysteries gathers here an attractive nosegay tribute to the legendary marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert—though the author's queen is no violet of sentiment (or risible caricature) but ardent, shrewd, and tough. In a modern idiom, Victoria tells her own story near the end of a long life. Born in 1819, offspring of the gallivanting Duke of Kent, she had a miserable childhood, thanks largely to her mother's platonic but simple-minded attachment to a con-man/social climber determined to control the future queen. Finally, however, after dear Uncle William's death (William IV), she's queen at last—and free! The triumphant, exhilarated young Victoria has a cherished champion and guide in the prime minister, Lord Melbourne. Then Uncle Leopold of Belgium sends over a brace of cousins, and one, of course, is Albert. True to her lusty Hanoverian blood, Victoria exclaims: ``He was beautiful!'' Marriage brings fabulous flight but also an inevitable clash of wills. Studious, dutiful Albert demands work and a husband's authority, but Victoria is not about to give up royal responsibilities—those she waited so long for—to anyone. She does capitulate, however, with a revelation: ``It is perfectly possible to love someone absolutely . . . even though you may be fighting with them for your very life.'' Through the years of parenthood (nine children, including poor Bertie, the Prince of Wales), grueling work, tragedy and triumphs, Albert's hard efforts and dedication grind on but his spirit flags. He dies at age 42. The old Victoria, still mourning, still besotted, states a bald truth: Her ``perfect'' one had a sad want of what they call pluck. With sure historical detail, Harrod-Eagles offers a gentle, lively, never oversweet portrait—with entertaining suppositions about the real Victoria behind that ``old woman in a bonnet'' on bottles of Bombay gin.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-13516-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
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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PERSPECTIVES
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