A marvelous first novel about growing up confused and trying to adjust to the imperfections of people who are supposed to know better (like your parents), from the author of the story collection Dangerous Men (1995—not reviewed). This is the story, told in his own ruefully funny voice, of Spencer Markus, a disconnected young Brooklynite whose adult life seems compounded of romantic disappointment, job insecurity, and variously addled relations with his vagrant father ``Spider,'' an itinerant rock-and-roll musician (a.k.a. ``Spiderman Dan'') who weaves unannounced and unpredictably in and out of Spencer's life. Becker's beautifully controlled plot gets off to a fast start with Spencer remembering a trip he almost took with his father to Canada, then noodles along agreeably chronicling this unheroic hero's misadventures working as a Customer Service rep for a blandly dishonest musical ``effects'' business (Mutronics), his injury during a peculiar outbreak of labor-union violence, and his rocky reunion with an old high-school girlfriend and her deeply neurotic dog Toby. Everybody here (including Toby) has a vividly distinctive personality, and Becker keeps coming up with amusing particulars. Spencer's patient correspondence with Mutronics' outraged customers (i.e., victims) is hilarious—and is skillfully used to nudge the novel toward its surprising, and moving, conclusion. Among the tale's irresistible details are a thumbnail portrait of Spencer's distracted grandmother (whose ``frequent conversations with her late husband . . . left the rest of us sitting in polite silence''), a baby's crib ingeniously fashioned from a speaker cabinet, and a band made up of law students calling itself the Pop Torts. Best of all, there's the characterization of Spencer's well-meaning, terminally screwed-up father, whose message to his kid memorably resounds over his, and the novel's, salutary craziness: ``Sometimes you have to take things to the extreme. . . . Out on the edges . . . that's where the good stuff is.'' A superlative debut, from a writer of very great promise. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14223-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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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