North turns from hayseed legal intrigue (Criminal Seduction, 1993) to a push-those-buttons mystery that pits her young heroine against demons that seem to go back through her family tree practically to the dawn of time. Called away from an archeological dig in Guatemala by the news that her father is hospitalized in New York, forensic anthropologist Iris Lanier hasn't a clue why John Lanier ever bought a gun, left his California orchard, and ventured into Riverside Park in the dead of night wearing a wire, only to get shot in the face. As Iris stumbles to establish a routine with the grotesques in her father's apartment buildingethereal musician Isaac Brightman, law student Mitch Hanley, super Rich Andrettiand with Justine Kizmin, the no-nonsense detective on the case, and Nathan Kaliker, the enigmatic head of the foundation that sent her (and, it turns out, Det. Kizmin) to school, she's enmeshed in complications that seem to link five vastly different crimes: (1) the near-fatal assault on her father; (2) the disappearance years ago of her mother, long presumed dead; (3) a fatal terrorist bombing by a fringe group of 60's radicals; (4) the murder of a teenaged girl whose bones Iris reluctantly agrees to look at while she's waiting for her father to come out of his coma; and (5) the stabbing death of the Lady Moonsmoke, the wife of the Mayan Sun God, whose bones Iris was excavating in Guatemala. (Warning: at least one of these crimes turns out to have nothing to do with the others.) North (Criminal Seduction, 1993) pulls out all the stopsmultiplying threats to Iris, invoking wholesale conspiracies, etc.but the result is merely a lot of pulled-out stops, as Iris dashes from California to Atlantic City confronting figures from her family past who spew out secrets of dubious relevance before fading mercifully back into the woodwork. Sprawling, taxing (of time, patience, and belief), and finally exhausting, like a train that stops at every village between New York and Guatemala City. (First printing of 50,000; Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93849-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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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