A complex but sophisticated and rewarding sequel to The Secret Generations (1985). Here continues the tale of those star families of espionage, the British Railtons and the American Farthings, who had mingled through marriage and a shared excellence in spying during WW I and after; not it's 1946, and suave spook Caspar Railton is in huge trouble. A British board of inquiry is looking into his running of Tarot, a Resistance network in France totally destroyed by the bestial S.S. man Hans-Dieter Klaubert, Le Diable d'Orleans. Not only that, but Caspar blames himself for the disappearance of his two nieces, Jo-Jo and Caroline, whom he recruited as couriers for Tarot. To Caspar's rescue comes his nephew, young Naldo Railton. Together with his cousin Arnold Farthing (an OSS man about to be CIA) and Farthing's brilliant 15-year-old operative, Lucas Kruger (known to Gardner fans from the Kruger triology), Naldo slowly ferrets out the truth: the Tarot network had been infiltrated from the beginning, although not by the Nazis. Hans-Dieter Klaubert was, astonishingly, a British agent in place in the Gestapo who kept Tarot running as long as he could but finally had to destroy it brutally when—through a mix-up—his English masters failed to support him. The search for Klaubert continues in postwar Germany, England, and America and turns up an unexpected prize in the person of Ramillies Railton, Caspar's long-lost brother. In the end, Klaubert is cornered in America and Jo-Jo and Caroline turn up safe and well. Ten notches above Gardner's unfortunate James Bond series in entertainment and expertise; a third Railton/Farthing saga seems assured, and is welcome.
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1987
ISBN: 0515102377
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1987
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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