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PORIUS

Name: PORIUS
Author: John Cowper Powys
ISBN: 978-1-58567-366-7

by John Cowper Powys & edited by Judith Bond and Morine Krisdóttir ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2007

And as for the Saxons? Well, suffice it to say that determined readers will learn a thing or two about all manner of...

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A sprawling addition to the Arthurian cycle, full of “civilized and Romanized” Brythonic Celts, uncivilized and unromanized Saxons and even a few more exotic types.

How do we know he’s a king? So asked the good denizens of Monty Python and the Holy Grail with respect to good King Arthur, to which the response came, “He hasn’t got shit all over him.” Powys’s Arthur cleans up pretty well, bobbing and weaving through the pages of this tome. As the story goes, Powys (1872–1963) brought its 1,600 manuscript pages to his publisher, who turned it down, presumably dismayed at the author’s disregard for the post-World War II paper shortage; it lost 500 pages and was published and promptly forgotten. The present edition restores Powys’s original, which tends toward encyclopedic lectures on alchemy and early British society and suchlike matters while throwing in rashers of violence and even some hints of the naughty bits. The novel, set in 499 CE, concerns the sentimental education of one Porius, son of Prince Einion and Princess Euronyw and thus a cousin removed of said Amherawdr Arthur (get used to Welsh, for the tale is thick with it), with young Porius growing skilled at various things and styles of thinking. His grandpa, Porius Manlius, is a tough old bird who admires such knowledge: “He knows the forest people’s tricks and all their jungles and swamps better than I ever knew our Uriconium textbooks of war!” That Robert Howardian moment aside, readers with a passion for all things Tolkien will find this epic a pleasure, for it is full of Tolkienesque characters and interludes (“Well! There is something about this boy bard’s mystical arrogance that would be bound to irritate an old collector of legends”) and plenty of good old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery stuff, all very well told if told at admittedly great length.

And as for the Saxons? Well, suffice it to say that determined readers will learn a thing or two about all manner of varlets—and some juicy Welsh curses.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-58567-366-7

Page Count: 752

Publisher: Overlook

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.