The Russian angle doesn’t quite work, but there are still enough agreeably romantic adventures and high living in town and...
Veteran chronicler of country-house misdeeds (The Dark Side of the Sun, 2000, etc.) spices her latest story of adulterous gentry with a Russian princess who buys her way into English society using stolen emeralds as the Bolsheviks take control of her native land.
Set after 1917, when Europe is recovering from one war and fearing an expansion of the Bolshevik revolution, matriarch Augusta Langham has only one objective: She wants son Bertie to marry well, and soon. Augusta is one of those implacable forces that are hard to resist, and Bertie doesn’t really try. She orders him to marry Mai, a wealthy young neighbor and heiress Augusta has picked out for him. But Mai is a Suffragette, and that’s too much for Augusta, who prefers someone more tractable. A new bride is needed, which is just the role beautiful Russian Princess Zhenia has been looking for. Newly arrived in England with her stash of emeralds and other expensive goodies stolen from a fellow Russian émigré in Paris, she is currently living with the aging Countess Olga, to whom she claims to be related. Zhenia is actually a scheming former ballet dancer determined to survive, whatever it takes. Impressed by the emeralds, Augusta engineers a marriage between Zhenia and Bertie, while Mai marries neighbor Ned, a handsome young man whose only passion is his butterfly collection. As Zhenia makes sure she gets what she wants, even if it means committing adultery to produce an heir, Mai has twins. Then, as Ned becomes increasingly abusive, she flees with the children to London, where she falls in love with Nicolai, a Russian émigré. But neither Zhenia nor Mai can quite escape her past—as the Russian secret police track the stolen diamonds, and Ned, determined to get them back, pursues Mai and his children.
The Russian angle doesn’t quite work, but there are still enough agreeably romantic adventures and high living in town and country to entertain.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32539-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
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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