The individual voices are not always easily made out, and the song is off in the land of Pierrot Lunaire. Still, brilliant,...
A symphony of a novel, with a master singer—an oltrano, capable of hitting notes most dogs can’t hear—at center stage.
Tropes mutate. Indeed, they mutate “into life itself, taking command of the text altogether, making its story their story—so that it may be said of certain texts not so much that they are lifelike as that the reading of them is like the experience of living.” Thus warned early on, the gentle reader should know that we are somewhere in the interstices among fiction and philosophy and criticism—the realm of the postmodern, in other words. Fear not, for McCourt (Queer Street, 2003, etc.) does not descend into the incomprehensible thickets just for the sake of doing so or to disguise not having anything to say; his language is precise, always lyrical, even if the reader may be forgiven for not knowing entirely where he or she is. Suffice it to say that Mawrdew Czgowchwz—a “famously temperamental mezzo-soprano” whose second name rhymes with “gorgeous”—has a story to tell, a sort of “Moby-Diva,” some of it involving a drunk Josef Stalin, some of it involving wanderings among New York, Ireland and Italy, always congenial country for characters who command a dazzling range of languages and references, coming and going and talking of Michelangelo—and Schopenhauer and higher mathematics and Wittgenstein and “the incurable anguish of the world” and a few dozen other eminently mutable tropes. The plot is as anarchic as a Marx Brothers film, and sometimes as funny, at least if you’re a philosophy don or a connoisseur of gnomic utterances. In the end, not so much happens, but the reader is in for a fine teasing out of the proposition that “language bends not happily to man’s will.” Bend here it does.
The individual voices are not always easily made out, and the song is off in the land of Pierrot Lunaire. Still, brilliant, experimental fun.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-933527-08-6
Page Count: 536
Publisher: Turtle Point
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
