By the author of several smoke-and-mirror novels of metaphysical speculation (City of Gates, 1993, etc.) in which Time, human history, and the mystic binges of saints and outsize sinners collide, mix, and swirl off in further mystery. Here, a Roman general—with all the trappings of ancient Rome but savvy as to electricity, radio, and air support—is marooned with his garrison in a desert outpost and there confronts the edge of eternity. Octavius has his orders from the decaying empire's center at Tivoli: Hold the garrison against the Savages, or Blue Warriors, a foe never seen. Octavius is a careful commander who maintains polite relationships with the neighboring Bedouins, whose spare lives answer the demands of the desert and its vast uncertainties, while within the severe, evanescent world of the camp, human dramas play out: Captive women are brought in, with their children, as ``whores''; there are deserters and executions; and dissension racks the family of a dead Arab chief. During the seven years of his service, Octavius communicates with his beloved wife Livia—in letters, then a journal, then in his increasingly fevered mind. He walks through the tombs of dead leaders, hears their voices and the voices of his old tutors, one declaring that all questions have answers, the other that Octavius will be able to ``be alone with difficult questions.'' At last, shocked into a terrible wrong and prodded by difficult cosmic questions, Octavius treks into the desert, only to find a horror—indicating he's gone too far, asked too much. Again from Elliott come symbols barnacled with religious and philosophical reference: primal fish (like the ``sacred carp'' of City of Gates), for example, or women as whores/seeresses/earth- mothers. Octavius's epiphany is a shade sensational, but Elliott skillfully sustains an eerie cosmic unease in a setting where men and their maps are but figures in the sand.
Pub Date: June 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-340-61846-9
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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