An entertaining, thoughtful look at a complicated historical, religious, artistic, and cultural crossroads.
In this YA thriller, an American teenager in Peshawar faces an ethical conundrum when he’s recruited by jihadis to destroy his father’s project.
It’s December 1984, and Luke Sands, 15, is angry that because of his parents’ recent divorce, he has to spend Christmas vacation with his father in Peshawar, the capital city of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Professor Sands is so obsessed with writing a book about an ancient civilization in the Peshawar Valley that it broke apart his marriage, and Luke wants nothing to do with the project. Luke shuts down and refuses to go sightseeing, preferring to listen to Bob Marley on his Walkman. But when father and son reconnect with the Shaheens, a Pashtun family they’d known back home in Saratoga, New York, Luke is drawn to the rebelliousness of their son, Rasheed, or “Rashi,” and to the beauty and intelligence of Rashi’s younger sister, Danisha, “Dani.” Although Luke makes a rash promise to help carry out a fatwa against his father’s book, he also gains a new appreciation for Pakistan’s rich cultural past when he’s introduced to Pir Sahib, a wise Sufi teacher, and hears traditional music at the shrine of a Sufi poet. Meanwhile, Luke struggles with his feelings for Dani, because any interaction is forbidden in strict Pashtun culture. A dangerous culture clash brews that puts people, artifacts, and scholarship at risk. Wilhelm (Treasure Town, 2016, etc.), a prolific writer of middle school, YA, and Choose Your Own Adventure books, offers an absorbing, rich historical tale. The thriller educates readers about the mid-'80s forces that led up to 9/11, and Wilhelm also provides a useful historical afterword covering 1985 to the present day. An especially strong, moving, and well-described theme is the power of music to overcome barriers of many kinds while the book also honestly acknowledges limitations and challenges in fighting extremism. Luke is a believable character who makes mistakes but also redeems himself with courage and generosity.
An entertaining, thoughtful look at a complicated historical, religious, artistic, and cultural crossroads.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-57869-016-9
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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