On her way home from an abortion she never wanted, a young lawyer pauses in the middle of the Boston Common to shoot her lover, another associate at her firm, wounding him slightly and setting in motion the most anemic courtroom drama in years. Why did Alison Moore, having purchased a handgun two weeks earlier, suddenly turn on Jack Donnelly? A series of brief, but interminable, flashbacks shows Alison's dependence from an early age on men's approval, her despondency over her failure to get work as an actress, and her turning to law school in desperation. Along the way, she had liaisons with a series of users and losers, including Jack, who emerges as cold, selfish, and emotionally sterile. As the trial date looms, Alison's bulldog lawyer, Lee Klein, realizes that everybody, from the anti-abortion activists who've made Alison their latest poster girl to the pro-choice feminists who seek Jack's head on a stick, ``wanted Alison to be a victim''—and so does Lee, because it's the only way she'll get her off. So Lee digs up an expert—evidently the only expert—on post- abortion syndrome and sets out to portray Alison as the helpless victim of Jack's passive abuse. Frozen out by his old colleagues at the firm, wondering forlornly why it's his behavior that's been put on trial, Jack is a sitting duck for Lee's slashing cross- examination. But don't expect any surprises in the courtroom sequences or afterwards. Since this inoffensive first novel never looks very hard at any of the hot-button issues it raises, you realize after a while that nothing is ever going to happen; you're trapped in a Beantown revival of Waiting for Lorena. Living proof that truth is stranger than fiction.
Pub Date: May 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59606-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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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