An anthropologist and his family take a chimpanzee into their home and make more of a fuss over the animal than readers are likely to in a first novel by science writer Preston (Cities of Gold, 1992). A curator at the Boston Museum of Natural History, Dr. Hugo Archibald goes to Africa to buy chimpanzee skulls and falls in love with a baby chimp, whom he brings home to his wife, Lea, and their young children, Sandy and Sarah. The Archibalds raise Jennie as a human child, dressing her in diapers and kids' clothes and buying her dolls and toys, and Jennie and Sandy become inseparable best friends. A neighbor who is a Christian minister takes it upon himself to bring Jennie to Jesus, and a primate researcher teaches her sign language. But then Jennie hits puberty, her hormones kick in, and, predictably, she becomes uncontrollable; the fate of this chimp who thinks she's human is not a pretty one. Much more insightful when it comes to animals than humans, Preston hasn't worked out the Archibalds' motivations, and this omission is a serious flaw of the novel. Preston seems to want readers to think that the Archibalds are merely eccentric when all his evidence points to the fact that these people are disturbed and that Jennie is filling some bizarre need in the family. Preston throws us a few tidbits—an adult Sarah confesses that she had hated Jennie because she believed that her father loved the chimpanzee better; Hugo, discussing with a colleague Jennie's care after he and his wife are dead, says that the Jennie problem is no different than having a mentally retarded child—but they only confuse us all the more. It doesn't help matters that the novel, written as an oral history, masquerades as nonfiction. As a novel, this is sometimes sweet but mostly strange. Better to take the kids to the soon-to-be-made Disney movie; Jennie's sophomoric monkeyshines—peddling away on her tricycle, scarfing bananas, and giving all and sundry ``the finger''—may play better on the silver screen than they do on the written page.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11294-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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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