A gloomy, character-driven story with a potency that’s not easy to match.
A woman questions her sanity when she begins interacting with ghosts in Abbott’s debut thriller.
One night, 44-year-old wife and mother Phoebe Rivers is out for a late run when two strangers accost and rape her. She manages to stab one of her assailants before a third man, Petrel, rescues her. She later learns that Petrel may be the ghost of a man who died approximately 70 years ago. She’s reluctant to tell the cops or her husband, David, about the rape, for fear that they’ll think her insane; besides, she thinks she may have killed one of the rapists. She goes on to see more dead people, such as Sorel, a runaway slave from the Civil War era—but that fact is far less disturbing than what Phoebe learns about David. It turns out that he has another life, including a girlfriend named Annette. The adulterous couple may be up to something unspeakably sinister—something that may put Phoebe and her children in danger. Abbott pulls no punches in her somber tale, and she draws readers into some very bleak territory. A number of scary scenes may make readers cringe, as they involve young children. The violence, however, is never left unchecked; instead, Abbott merely highlights details of grisly sequences and lets readers’ imaginations carry the rest. Whether Phoebe is truly witnessing spirits or dreaming them is initially ambiguous, but the story makes it abundantly clear what’s happening before it’s over. In any case, the ghosts aren’t as riveting as the living characters. Annette, for instance, proves the vilest and most reprehensible character of all; the chapters focusing on her perspective reveal a back story that readers may find impossible to forget. The narrative’s timeline, however, is a little hard to follow, and the ages of Phoebe’s children are inconsistent. The kids’ long-suffering mother, though, is indefatigable. Indeed, Phoebe faces every tribulation head-on—an admirable trait in a protagonist.
A gloomy, character-driven story with a potency that’s not easy to match.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1612964881
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2015
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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