For the most part, the surreal and tenuously connected pieces of this novel build an intriguing and intense narrative of...
A mysterious and frequently beautiful short novel by Unrue (Writing/Harvard; Life of a Star, 2010, etc.) pulls the reader into a sequence of heady, surreal vignettes that add up to more of a sensual experience than a coherent story.
A woman wanders through a strange hotel and an unnamed city, searching for a man or a child—in this novel, details and time are both often elusive—on behalf of a seductive and sinister couple who live on a luxurious estate. Hints of back story and plot come through, but the novel seems to be less about the pull of story and more about the power of atmosphere, feeling, and how perfectly chosen, lavishly described details can make the reader flesh out an enormous world in the space between them. “I was recalling information so ornately,” the woman says, and she does, remembering and describing in images that are full of color, texture and sensation. The voice of the novel comes from inside her head, with sentences that are often disjointed and rhythmically uncomfortable, jumping from thought to memory without concern for linear storyline or traditional structure. Some pages are empty except for a few words, transforming the turn of a page into a noticeable rhythmic event. Everything could exist in either a dream or a nightmare, and certain vignettes push the novel into the realm of the fantastical with snippets of other stories that feel like fairy tales. A man searches for his wife in a forest, unaware that the trees move of their own volition. A man watches his sons turn into wolves and murder a couple.
For the most part, the surreal and tenuously connected pieces of this novel build an intriguing and intense narrative of feeling, even if the story itself remains unclear.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2270-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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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