A shrewd, funny and sometimes brutal vision of troubled times.
A geopolitical thriller that aims to please everybody: less gunplay than Tom Clancy, more yuks than Don DeLillo.
J.P. Yates is the sort of expert speaker—among those he addresses are members of governments and corporations—who sells out conventions: He expounds regularly on matters of human longevity, God, porn and whatever else a decent honorarium will dislodge from his brain. But at one gathering in Johannesburg, prompted by a few drinks and a recent breakup, Yates decides he’s had enough and knocks down the house of cards, proclaiming in a speech that “I know nothing” and crowning himself “the founding father of the Coalition of the Clueless.” Both his reputation and his body get roughed up as a reward for his candor, but Yates’s stunt also attracts the attention of a shady quasi-governmental group that invites him to travel the world and report back on anti-Americanism wherever he finds it. In fast-paced prose, Othmer tracks Yates’s travels to Greenland, Italy, Fiji and the mythical war-torn land of Bas‘ar (a stand-in for Iraq), where the truth about his patrons is ultimately revealed. But the main plot isn’t as much fun as the rhetorical detours. Othmer offers a darkly comic vision of a planet slowly but surely sliding into dystopia: Terrorists are busy on the ground, while in space the wealthy residents of an orbiting space hotel asphyxiate on live TV after the oxygen generator malfunctions. By the closing chapters, Othmer’s initial crankiness about our collective self-delusion gives way to full-blown cynicism—any signs that life in Bas‘ar is improving are the invention of press releases and jury-rigged photo-ops. But the tone is much too sober to qualify as a partisan political rant, and Othmer is a sure-footed commentator; Yates’s worries about who’s in charge and what his role is mirrors the concerns of any citizen watching the news.
A shrewd, funny and sometimes brutal vision of troubled times.Pub Date: June 6, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51722-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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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