Think Huckleberry Finn in hormonal overdrive, or Penrod with a perpetual erection. They won’t be assigning this one in...
You really can hear the hushed resonant voice of the genial host of NPR’s Prairie Home Companion reciting this latest episodic chronicle of growing up in rural Minnesota.
Keillor’s first novel in four years (following Wobegon Boy, 1997) is narrated by (obvious authorial surrogate) 14-year-old Gary, the timid yet intellectually adventurous son of a placid family who belong to the evangelical Christian Sanctified Brethren. Sanctified or not, Gary fantasizes energetically and guiltily about sex (hiding his borrowed copy of High School Orgies from the disapproving scrutiny of his deeply conservative Daddy—a worrywart of Herculean proportions—and annoyingly pious Oldest Sister). The narrative rambles about amiably, as Gary bonds affectionately with his doting, dotty maiden Aunt Eva (who may remind readers of Truman Capote’s immortal Cousin Sook), trespasses the bounds of decency with his hellion cousin Kate, works as a temporary sportswriter covering the woeful Lake Wobegon Whippets baseball team (who approach mediocrity, thanks to star pitcher Roger Guppy, Kate’s secret beau), and tentatively exercises his writing muscles further by concocting hilariously inchoate short stories (don’t miss the one about the deflowering of Eleanor of Aquitaine*). It’s a delightful comic romp, featuring characters who deserve to become legends—like Lake Wobegon’s own Bonnie and Clyde, criminal fugitives Ricky Guppy (Roger’s brother) and his girlfriend Dede, who versify their exploits for the newspapers (“To live in peace is our desire. / We love each other. Hold your fire”) and Whippets’ coach Ding Schoenecker (his policy on drinking in the dugout: “If you can’t remember how many strikes on you, you’ve had too much”). Gary dutifully records them all, while burning with numerous unslakeable lusts.
Think Huckleberry Finn in hormonal overdrive, or Penrod with a perpetual erection. They won’t be assigning this one in elementary schools, but adults of all ages should find Keillor’s refreshingly impudent Americana just about irresistible.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-03003-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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