Tropper (How to Talk to a Widower, 2007, etc.) has covered this man-child territory before, but few can rival his poignant...
Reeling from the sudden collapse of his marriage, Judd Foxman spends an illuminating week with his dysfunctional family.
It’s bad enough that he walks in on his wife Jen making love to another man in their bed, but the betrayal is doubly devastating when Judd realizes her partner is his boss Wade, a macho talk-radio blowhard. With the image of the two of them likely to be seared permanently onto his retinas, Judd crawls off to a sad basement rental, only to be roused a short time later by the news that his cancer-stricken father has finally died. Judd’s pop-psychologist mother Hillary calls her four grown children home to sit shiva for a full seven days, but it’s doubtful that her atheist husband would have truly appreciated this nod to Jewish tradition. Unhappy as he is, Judd can take some comfort in the fact that the rest of the Foxmans are just as screwed up. His older brother Paul, once a gifted athlete, still blames Judd for the dog attack that brought his baseball career to a halt. Paul’s wife Alice is so eager to get pregnant that she makes Judd an indecent proposal any sensible brother-in-law would refuse. Sister Wendy, married to a self-absorbed jerk, still carries a torch for her childhood sweetheart Horry, who suffered permanent brain injury in a college bar fight. And prodigal youngest Phillip shows up in a Ferrari with his much older life coach/girlfriend Tracy in tow. Thrown into the mix is potential new love interest Penny, who tantalized Judd in high school, and the news that Jen is pregnant with his (not Wade’s) baby. All this sets up Judd for a major day of reckoning, and the realization that maybe, just maybe, he has contributed to some of the problems in his life.
Tropper (How to Talk to a Widower, 2007, etc.) has covered this man-child territory before, but few can rival his poignant depictions of damaged men befuddled by the women they love.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-525-95127-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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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