A meandering, affecting tale of a refugee’s plight.
Vitovec’s debut novel charts a Czech man’s life from his youth under Nazi occupation and communism through his adulthood in exile.
Following the 1938 Munich Agreement, Nazi Germany annexed parts of the two-decades-old sovereign republic of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia—which had not participated in the agreement—was then subjected to division and occupation for the duration of World War II. Jan Neuman experiences the occupation as a young boy, witnessing the humiliation of his father and other Czechoslovakian patriots, as well as the persecution and deportation of his Jewish neighbors. The use of one family to represent the massacred Czech Jewish community and one to represent the Nazi-sympathetic ethnic-German community, is a bit narrowly focused, but it allows Vitovec to cultivate his characters. Neuman’s family and community are elated when their nation is liberated at the end of the war, but just a few short years later, a communist coup returns the country to authoritarianism. After Neuman’s newspaper drawings run afoul of state censors, he experiences repression firsthand. He and his friends flee into the American zone of occupied Germany, hoping to join a rumored Czech resistance legion, only to find themselves interred in a Displaced Persons camp. Escaping these confines, the young men wander through Europe as stateless refugees. An older Czech man describes the situation when Neuman arrives in Paris: “Poles, Arabs, beggars. Street people. And now Czechs. Living like animals. Like dogs out in the alley, sleeping on trash and eating garbage.” Eventually, Neuman makes his way to the United States, where he tumbles into a marriage and career in the Air Force, without ever quite finding a home. Later in the novel, Vitovec introduces a forced—yet still moving—star-crossed love story and a convoluted account of revenge against a former Nazi. At 79 chapters, the book is overpacked, seeking to provide an entire fictional biography. Despite these issues, it offers a powerful picture of a refugee’s struggle—a timely subject.
A meandering, affecting tale of a refugee’s plight.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-59431-5
Page Count: 572
Publisher: CzechMate
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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