Both those familiar and those unfamiliar with Fanon’s work are likely to be bemused by this strange potpourri.
The noted African-American author pays homage to psychiatrist/activist Frantz Fanon, best known for his anti-colonial classic The Wretched of the Earth, in this quasi-fictional meditation that incorporates bits of Wideman’s own history.
Wideman has been mulling over his “Fanon project” for years; see the story “Fanon” in the collection God’s Gym (2005). He is evidently looking for a way in which he and his alter ego Thomas, the book’s protagonist, can connect to the transcendent spirit of the black Frenchman, who died in 1961, and have that spirit infuse the African-American struggle against racism. First things first though. A severed head is delivered by UPS to Thomas, who is writing Fanon’s biography. The head is accompanied by a note, a quote from one of Fanon’s works. Is it Fanon’s head, magically restored? Is the author playing head games? Thomas eventually tosses it in the river, but the questions linger disquietingly. Wideman makes the most direct connection between Fanon and Homewood, the Pittsburgh ghetto where Wideman grew up, when he juxtaposes Fanon’s questioning (in his role as psychiatrist) of two Algerian boys, accused killers, with an imaginary Homewood teenager who in the blink of an eye becomes a murder victim. The Homewood teenager is memorialized by an old lady, possibly Wideman’s mother, in a monologue that is a small miracle; nothing else equals its intensity. Wideman also conjectures that his mother had some tenuous contact with Fanon in the Bethesda, Md., hospital where Fanon died; as for his life, there are only snippets, sure to puzzle the uninitiated. Sometimes Fanon appears tangentially. At other times he disappears altogether as Wideman/Thomas riff on current highs and lows, prompting the cry: “This thinking all fine and dandy but it’s not the book…” No indeed.
Both those familiar and those unfamiliar with Fanon’s work are likely to be bemused by this strange potpourri.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-618-94263-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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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