A must-read story of relationships, prejudice and bravery, and a vivid paean for justice.
In Blair’s debut novel, African-American Freddie Edwards’ life story unfolds across history as a complex tapestry, leading up to his arrest for the killing of a 75-year-old man.
This superbly crafted, intricately detailed story is by turns joyful, sorrowful, frightening and uplifting. Blair draws readers in by establishing a mystery, as Annabelle Mann, the staid, white widow of a respected judge, is called to testify as a character witness for Edwards, a black man with a criminal record who’s accused of murder. The story then exquisitely details the childhoods of Mann, Edwards and his sister, Ruby, in 1930s Tampa, Florida. The post-Depression economy has forced Mann’s family to live on the edge of a black neighborhood; her father is a philandering salesman, largely absent from her life, while her mother is an open, generous woman. In graceful prose, Blair takes time to develop the children’s friendship: Ruby and Annabelle hit it off immediately, but Freddie distrusts the new white girl. Annabelle recognizes his innate intelligence, however, and lures him into friendship by lending him books. Freddie loves stories about knights, hence his self-proclaimed nickname, “the Black Knight,” a moniker he lives up to by always rescuing the mischievous girls. As Blair further develops the characters, as well as the time and place they live in, she toys with the overarching mystery. Chapters vacillate between past and present, and the narrative gradually drops hints about a strange, rich, neighborhood white man. Overall, this fine book offers well-drawn, human characters and logically flowing action, all written in a striking style: “Two silver-haired women walked together on an otherwise empty beach, its pristine white sands stretching endlessly around them, its peaceful quiet broken only by the sounds of waves lapping at the shore and gulls calling overhead.”
A must-read story of relationships, prejudice and bravery, and a vivid paean for justice.Pub Date: July 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499540338
Page Count: 470
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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