Ex-rock-and-roll star Kihn's first novel, Horror Show (1996), was a romp based on the satirical film Ed Wood. This time out, he deals with the Banshee, the Irish angel of death, also sometimes regarded as the avenging angel of wronged womanhood. Through a restaurant window, Manhattan shrink Jukes Wahler has himself seen the Banshee, the most beautiful woman on earth. Soon after, a new patient, Declan Loomis, a paranoid, comes for comforting: He, too, has seen the Banshee and asks Wahler to help him die. Wahler, of course, attempts to talk Loomis out of his crazy idea—but not long after, Loomis turns up dead, having been murdered in a particularly grisly fashion. And he's not the only one. The week before, Wahler discovers, Brendan Killian (a radical poet from Ireland) died in the same manner, his body seemingly destroyed by an explosion. Meanwhile, Wahler's sister Cathy has been beaten to a pulp yet again by her vicious fashion photographer boyfriend, Bobby Sudden, who hangs around with Irish terrorist Padraic O'Connor—another who has seen the Banshee and is convinced that he will die. Bobby beats up Wahler, abducts Cathy, and Wahler reports him. But reluctant police see only a lovers' quarrel. Wahler then goes off to see Fiona Rice, a professor of Irish mythology, who fills him in on the Banshee. Is it running amok in Manhattan? By this time, Bobby has got Cathy strung out on heroin. He also, as it happens, likes to kill whores and take snuff photos of their mutilated bodies, to the accompaniment of Procol Harum's recording of ``A Whiter Shade of Pale.'' O'Connor, pretending to be a private detective, visits Wahler and tells him he'll find Cathy for him if Wahler will find the Banshee in return, in hopes that Wahler can help him get off the hook with the ferocious angel. Before Wahler can act, though, the Banshee comes calling on Bobby. Less original but better told than Horror Show.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86046-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
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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