An engaging, if somewhat facile, novel of wartime.
Dustin tells the story of two brothers caught in the horrors of World War II in this debut novel.
When Nazi SS officers show up at his mother’s house in the middle of the night, 16-year-old Karl Elheusch knows they’ve come for him and his brothers. It’s October 1944, and Germany’s defenses are collapsing on all fronts. Hitler has ordered that all German boys over the age of 12 be pressed into military service to bolster the nation’s depleted armed forces. Sixty years later, Karl’s daughter, Ellie, waits at Washington Dulles International Airport to pick him up; it’s his first trip to the United States from Germany. But the elderly Karl suffers from chest pains soon after he arrives, so Ellie takes him to a hospital, where she learns that his heart is enlarged and will require a stent. While dozing, Karl remembers his time during the war. He and his brother, Hans, were forced to man the eastern front and were eventually captured by the Russians—an enemy that was much feared for its callous treatment of prisoners. Karl became separated from Hans and managed to escape, only to fall into the hands of American forces. As a prisoner of war, he was forced to assist in the cleanup of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he confronted German atrocities against people he once knew. Concerned for Hans’ safety and unsure of his own fate, Karl underwent psychological torments that stayed with him for decades to come. Dustin writes in a plain but effective prose, communicating the details of Karl’s life in grim simplicity: “Prepare yourselves,” another POW warns Karl at one point. “They took a few of us to Mauthausen yesterday morning. I saw piles and piles of skeletons, dead after dead.” In an afterword, the author reveals that the novel was based on a true story, and it reads as such. This isn’t always for the best, however, as the larger themes of trauma and regret get somewhat lost in the particulars of Karl’s biography, and the serendipitous way that Karl’s past merges with his present feels almost jokey in tone. Even so, readers who are interested in semihistorical World War II stories will likely enjoy Karl’s tale.
An engaging, if somewhat facile, novel of wartime.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5374-7507-3
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2016
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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