The eighth novel from the author of the endearing Staggerford series (Dear James, 1993, etc.): a delight about five faculty members who in 1969 start a jazz group at their small Minnesota state college. Tongue firmly in cheek, Hassler cheerfully sends up student unrest, inane college bureaucrats, and other academic idiosyncracies both universal and peculiar to the '60s. Remote Rookery State College is the unlikely place where Neil Novotny, lousy English teacher and mediocre unpublished novelist, comes up with the idea of starting a jazz quintet. With the help of Peggy Benoit, Neil's muse and out-of-reach love, he recruits a cast of eccentrics from a town and state full of same: Leland Edwards, slavishly devoted to his mother (with whom he still lives), will play the piano—and a mean piano it is; Connor, a painter lured away from a Minneapolis private college, plucks the bass; Peggy plays the clarinet; and Victor Dash the drums. The five make music against a backdrop of '60s shenanigans, as when Victor becomes campus leader of the Faculty Alliance of America, a neophyte union urging the faculty to strike (salaries have been frozen for two years). The novel goes on in this vein: bright, antic, and vivid, with lots of deadpan humor, romantic and political intrigue, affectionate reversals of fortune. Just when it seems that Neil will be fired because students arrange their schedules to avoid his class and because he isn't published, Connor arranges for Emerson Tate, a Minneapolis critic connected with a small press, to rewrite Neil's novel into a historical romance. With a supporting cast of characters who almost always amuse and entertain, Hassler's comic formula remains fresh, even as the strike fails and the caravan moves on. Hassler displays once again why he's the novel's answer to Garrison Keillor. This may not be Lucky Jim, but it's worthy to be mentioned in the same breath. (First printing of 40,000)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39356-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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