A promising first effort, deliciously creepy and often moving.
This cohesive debut collection of seven stories, most taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area, revolves around the notion of rescue.
When nature is out of whack, humankind tends to pay the price. In these stories, as toxic landscapes pose a threat to individuals and communities, several characters undergo grotesque transformations or enter virtually catatonic states. In “Wawona,” a teenage girl unable to move after a surfing accident finds herself stuck in the back of her panicked boyfriend’s truck. Another predominant motif centers on water in a variety of forms: ocean, reservoir, rain, mist, fog; in Brunicardi’s narratives, this normally life-giving substance becomes volatile and dangerous. The title character of “The Quickening of Ethan Boyd” comes into contact with a contaminated stream and slowly slips into an altered state of being. In the final lines, a touching farewell to his beloved wife takes a bizarre turn and suggests a bloody, chaotic aftermath: “My sulfurous teeth await your soft shoulder.” In a compact space, the author constructs well-paced narratives with adequate character development and mounting suspense. For instance, descriptions of the elderly couple under siege in “Mountainous”—“Gordon looked at his wife of forty one years. She seemed so small and frail standing there in the middle of the room, like a frightened animal”—give readers a clear sense of the lifetime they have spent together and the sacrifices each partner is willing to make for the other as they confront demons. Not all of these tales rely upon fantastical elements to pack a punch. The most realistic story, “The Seeds of Antipathy,” is perhaps the hardest hitting. When his young son nearly drowns, Blake decides to face a tragic event from his past that he has unsuccessfully tried to forget. Boarding a plane, “He began to doze and was immediately awakened by the gliss of a pearly clarinet as the airline’s adopted theme song was piped into the cabin.” In one of the book’s most haunting images, a clarinet case eerily floats on the water’s deceptively calm surface.
A promising first effort, deliciously creepy and often moving.Pub Date: June 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1600478727
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Wasteland Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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