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AMERICAN WARRIOR

Name: AMERICAN WARRIOR
Author: James Snyder
ISBN: 978-0741423207

by James Snyder James Snyder ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 16, 2004

A fast-paced, sometimes uneven, thoroughly engrossing story of a journey through pain and violence.

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In this military thriller, a boy grows to maturity with violence, first at home, as its victim, and, finally, through martial arts and the military, as its master.

As a child in the 1960s, Paul Brett was often beaten by his vicious, drunk father. On his paper route he meets a man named Draeger, who teaches him pentjak silat—Indonesian martial arts. By the end of high school, Paul masters the techniques of this discipline. A run-in with the law leads him to enlist in the Army. He ends up in Vietnam with the Green Berets, operating secretly behind enemy lines in Laos. One mission goes horribly wrong; Paul goes AWOL, but he’s captured and thrown into a military prison in Maine, where he has to fight for his life to survive. This book is hard to put down, and at times, especially during scenes set in Vietnam, the realism is startling and palpable. The challenges of Paul’s life—emotional, physical and psychological—are compelling. First-time novelist Snyder uses a spare, direct vocabulary for the action scenes, though he sometimes switches to an elevated tone (“fathomless despair,” “mother’s watery womb”) that jars. And there are narrative gaps. After Paul begins his martial arts training, any mention of his home life ceases until many years have passed, including a pivotal incident when he first confronts his father’s abuse. After Draeger dies, Paul drops martial arts, an important part of his identity, and pentjak silat isn’t mentioned again until he is in prison, many years later. The fight scenes at the prison mostly take the form of visions, presented via various images, but are sketched with too little description of the physical confrontations.

A fast-paced, sometimes uneven, thoroughly engrossing story of a journey through pain and violence.

Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2004

ISBN: 978-0741423207

Page Count: 332

Publisher: Infinity Publishing

Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.