A dark winter of the spirit in a South African setting—and limned in sometimes too exquisite prose—by the author of Another Country (1992). Though his novel's set against a background suggestive of the oppressions of the recent past, Schoeman, an Afrikaner living abroad, is more concerned with the universal implications of violence, the role of creativity ``under siege,'' and the destruction of long-held ethnic shibboleths. Protagonist Adriaan, an acclaimed Afrikaner poet, lives in Cape Town, but the city's familiar landmarks are incidental, for what is happening to Adriaan and the city is reminiscent of places like Sarajevo—places where, as a fellow poet observes, ``There was a community, there was something happening here, something was alive—that's all gone now.'' Now in this city, in this ``burnt-out country,'' barbed wire closes off roads, and blood stains the asphalt. Over a dreary rainy winter, Adriaan, who is also mourning the departure of his lover Stephan, finds he cannot write. His job at a small museum cataloging donations seems futile; the local literati's posturing even more desperate; and the country's future bleak. Old friends flee to Europe, abandoning beloved homes in the countryside because there's no point going on, while others realize that they've been duped by the authorities, by Afrikaner mythology. Referring to a visit into the countryside, a journalist friend admits that, like a foreigner, he can now look cleareyed at what is happening: at the pervasive violence and poverty. As the winter ends, Adriaan, reconciled to solitude, has taken leave, as it were, of the place, and begins to write again, acknowledging ``that love remains, and memories, but that could never be enough. One did one's work.'' Life, creativity will endure. Palpably dark and apocalyptic evocations of GîtterdÑmmerung and creative despair, though the themes are long in the working, and never quite live up to their implied promise.
Pub Date: June 15, 1993
ISBN: 1-85619-200-8
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Sinclair-Stevenson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
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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