Leaves a very sour aftertaste—but that’s probably the point.
Disappointing follow-up to The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2001) sends another Soviet-born Jewish protagonist to another global hot spot.
This time, Shteyngart’s not-so-heroic hero is 30-year-old, 325-pound Misha Vainberg, son of a St. Petersburg gangster who’s just been offed on the Palace Bridge. Misha would like to go back to the U.S., where he spent the 1990s happily attending college and sampling New York’s multicultural delights. But now, in 2001, he can’t get an American visa—there’s that small matter of the Oklahoma businessman whom beloved papa iced. His only way out is a trip to the Republic of Absurdistan, where the millions he negotiated as a settlement with Papa’s killer (another mobster) can buy him a Belgian passport and a ticket back to Western materialism. So Misha heads for Absurdistan, a chaotic Caucasian region populated by two warring ethnic groups plus plenty of visiting employees of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root: It seems there’s oil somewhere in them thar hills. This sticky situation degenerates into civil war as nasty as it is ludicrous. (The sardonic chapter entitled “Why the Sevo and Svanï Don’t Get Along” says it all about the stupidity of ancient grudges.) Shteyngart’s eye for the comic horrors of modern life remains acute: Prostitutes at the Absurdistan Hyatt offer discounts for “Golly Burton,” and the local alleged reformers are appalled by the death of a protestor at the G8 summit “just as our struggle for democracy was gaining some market share in the global media.” Ugly ethnic conflict, however, makes a dicier foundation for humor than the wide-open Eastern Europe of Shteyngart’s first novel (referred to here as The Russian Arriviste’s Hand Job). He now seems to be aiming for a tougher statement here with the brutal murder of a local democrat, but his characters are too grotesque to prompt much sympathy. And yet again, an author relies on the fact that 9/11 is approaching to pump up his climax’s suspense; at least Shteyngart spares us an actual rehash.
Leaves a very sour aftertaste—but that’s probably the point.Pub Date: May 9, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6196-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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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