An often addictive read with intimate settings and fine supporting characters, even if its protagonist is a bit too...
In Sider’s (The Things That Fall Away, 2013) novel, a privileged young woman’s life undergoes a radical shift when she’s sent to prison on trumped-up drug charges.
Abby Blackwood is an intelligent, beautiful yet aimless woman who’s floundering after high school. After offhandedly pointing out a drug dealer to an undercover cop, she unbelievably receives a five-year sentence at the Maysville Correctional Facility for Women. After initially trying to keep to herself by reading Neil Gaiman novels and taking long runs during yard time, she eventually makes new friends, including Mad T, her intimidating but illiterate suite mate; Sheronda, a savvy woman with a knack for gossip; and Grandma, an elderly gang leader who protects Christian inmates from sexual predators. Abby, who’s well-schooled in self-defense and small-town drama, finds herself uniquely suited to prison life, and her intelligence and pluck earn her respect from fellow inmates as well as guards. In fact, pretty-boy Sgt. Quinn’s subtle glances and restrained advances eventually lead to a secret affair. After Abby’s early release, she discovers the challenges of facing the world as both an ex-con and an expectant mother. Sider excels at portraying micro-communities, from the dynamic of Abby’s desultory life in small-town Springfield to the church-based, gossip-laden atmosphere of the town of Grayson, which she joins after her release. But the intricate hierarchy of the guards and prisoners in Maysville’s Unit B is most impressive; it’s a sexually charged but heartwarming place where morals, friendship and love matter as much as baser motivations. These memorable settings, and their respective supporting casts, are key to the novel, as Abby’s characterization is rather weak; she seems far too capable and self-aware, and she undergoes little dramatic change or growth. Instead, Abby merely weathers whatever conflict is thrust upon her in the moment, from her father’s death to the numerous obstacles she faces as she tries to reunite with Quinn.
An often addictive read with intimate settings and fine supporting characters, even if its protagonist is a bit too unshakeable.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1940950006
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Devilwood Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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