Though a bit inconsistent, Daneshvari has great comic timing. She’s an author to watch.
Channeling Fay Weldon’s classic The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, this debut novel concerns an ugly girl’s transformation and its menacing consequences.
The opening pages of Anna Norton’s saga will have the reader gasping (not quite in sympathy) at her sad, dysfunctional life. From childhood to college, Anna has been ostracized and alone, a social misfit in search of a fairy godmother. None exist in Ohio, so she is left as is: fat, with cystic acne, black stretch pants, dandruff and dried food in the corners of her mouth. After graduating with a degree in molecular biology, she moves to New York, where she finds her FG (fairy godmother) in the form of Janice, a successful caterer who hires Anna as an assistant. FG Janice sends Anna walking all over the city in search of obscure ingredients; takes her to the Gap, so that Anna can start dressing in simple, elegant black; and ensures that all of Anna’s neighborhood takeaway establishments refuse to serve her food. Thanks to diet, exercise and a trip to the dermatologist, Anna is, if not suddenly Audrey Hepburn, at least an attractive, healthy young woman, stylishly attired. As karmic reward, she meets Ben Reynolds and is dumbstruck by his astounding male beauty. Ben, bored by shallow models, falls for Anna, and her life becomes perfect—except for all those women flirting with Ben every moment of the day. Eaten up by 22 years of insecurities, Anna embarks on The Makedown, in which Ben will become a little less desirable and remain with Anna forever. She dresses him in flannel, puts Nair in his shampoo, convinces him that a Skör bar is a new health snack, cancels his gym membership and has him grow a shaggy beard. In the process, Ben’s ego is destroyed and it is up to Ann to reverse the makedown, even if it ends their relationship.
Though a bit inconsistent, Daneshvari has great comic timing. She’s an author to watch.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-69988-4
Page Count: 326
Publisher: 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
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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