A stiff but sometimes moving debut about a day in the life of an 88-year-old woman. The often crotchety Ruth has lived for 20 years in a condominium complex in southern California, wondering ``How in God's name'' her life ``could have turned out like this?'' In pondering that question, she recalls a life in which ``She had been prudent. She had risked little. She had lost little. She had chosen correctly.'' And yet things still pull terribly at her heart: For decades, she's been ``marooned with a moron,'' her kind but foolish second husband; her granddaughter is married to a man whom Ruth finds self-interested and irresponsible; and her health, at long last, seems to be failing (she sees white lights, feels pangs, has spells). The secret core of Ruth's emotional life is her keen yearning for her first husband, Hale, who died long ago of a bizarre virus. During Ruth's reminiscences, we get glimpses of characters from the past—an opera-singing aunt who tricked her way into marriage to account for a pregnancy; a flamboyant friend from UCLA who owns a racy lingerie shop—as well as characters from the present, like Ruth's understanding and beloved cleaning ``girl'' Luzma and her little son Luis. Phillips's task—to write interestingly about the confined doings of an ancient, guarded, set-in-her-ways person who feels that life has passed her by—is a daunting one; and, while the events and details of Ruth's mundane life of TV dinners, old photos, and crotchety habits aren't always either captivating or patently charming, her day—an outing, a meal, a visit—nevertheless draws to a close (``The past seemed to steer her'') in small and genuine steps amidst passages of writing (``Life, she thought, was so incredibly temporary. Nothing ever lasted, nobody ever stayed'') that can draw strongly on a reader's heart, however briefly. An ambitious first novel, in all, that suggests a strong emerging talent.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-395-74285-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
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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