Superbly imagined first novel by a former Marine captain who was also the screenwriter for Bob Fosse's Cabaret, which was based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin. Nebenzal knows prewar Berlin like his own moles. For 12 years Daniel Saporta, a Sephardic Jew masquerading as a Spaniard named Daniel Salazar, runs the Klub Kaukasus in Berlin at the height of its decadence. And Klub Kaukasus is as decadent and colorful a cafe as you might ever hope to lose your virtue in. Especially nifty are Daniel's Turkish, Armenian, and Egyptian belly dancers (many of whom were parentally declitorized in pubescence) whose dances and orgasmically rippling bellies excite the high-styled clientele. The Klub is a fabulous success, and Nebenzal's knowledge of how to run such a club, keep the girls in line, and the show fresh is detailed with headspinning authenticity. One can't praise enough this novel's Nabokovian, termite-like detail, no matter what area of life it enters into: Middle Eastern Jewish life, German military life, the endless levels of a Pan-European capital's society, national varieties of cuisine, or the types of mentality of its characters. Daniel raises a streetwise former doorman, Lohmann, to be his second-in-command, and Lohmann's gratitude for being lifted out of the lower classes is one of the novel's most moving themes. But war comes; the club's Russian fare falls into the ersatz and makeshift; the high life departs; even the dancers are listless; and only Nazi toadies and functionaries fill the tables. Then Daniel is drafted unwillingly into helping the underground: The Germans have extended the Final Solution to the Middle East, with their Arab cohorts massacring Jews. Daniel must sacrifice his beloved Samira, a dancer, so she can become a spy servicing a Nazi pervert—and a rich scene it is when he givers her these orders. After a strong start, it gets only better.
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1992
ISBN: 0-87951-458-2
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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