Allegories and symbolism—Christian dying, being revived—perhaps should be taken as ironic in this postmodern breakdown saga.
Nelms debuts with a dark psychological drama tracing Christian Franco’s spiral into madness.
Christian’s the son of a New York cop and a homemaker, strictly middle-class borough folk. Then Christian’s father kills his mother. Despite sloppy foster care and sexual abuse, Christian won't be denied, and so it’s law school honors and the fast track at a prestigious law firm. There’s money, major partner mentoring and then marriage to beautiful, irresistible Lisa. Life’s perfect, except that Christian’s a tightened-down pressure cooker fueled by rage and suppressed memories of his mother’s murder. Lisa leaves. Christian self-medicates with alcohol and drugs, neglects work and instigates fights: "There was nothing like a good beat down to take the edge off." Soon, he’s out of second chances, fired after the night he’s beaten almost to death and narrowly revived. Unconscious, Christian experienced what he calls "The White...bright and clean and perfect...yet soothing and comfortable," with flashes of suppressed childhood traumas on display. After Christian awakens, he sketches memories in manic episodes—dozens of drawings. Christian’s rage-fueled quest to know the truth of his childhood comes in strobe-light snapshot chapters, flashes of manic action much like Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressional narratives. Christian becomes obsessed with dying, confronting "The White" and then being revived again. Christian soon meets Dr. Cordoba, defrocked physician/researcher working part time treating injured fighting dogs. Christian persuades her to kill and then revive him, which she does in her hidden laboratory, but the cost she exacts is demented. Nelms writes in first person, with sardonic, distanced second-person chapters scattered about, with an intensity and focus that will keep the reader wondering. Christian—"I am an amorphous id in jeans and a tee shirt moving quickly through structures of glass and marble with a single focus"—isn’t a sympathetic character, but he’s the engine of the demented narrative.
Allegories and symbolism—Christian dying, being revived—perhaps should be taken as ironic in this postmodern breakdown saga.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4405-7180-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tyrus Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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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