Although it is heavy-handed and even downright pretentious at times, this debut novel showcases Mosby's measured, literate style. In 1926, Vienna Daniels leaves a privileged life in New York and marries a man she barely knows, following him to his family's home, the Heights, in Winsville, W.Va., the sort of town where the mayor's wife serves iced tea in champagne glasses. Vienna, an intellectual, is regarded as an aloof snob. When her husband leaves, Vienna, who already has an infant daughter named Willa, learns that she is expecting another child and eventually gives birth to Elliott. She remains legally married and lies to the children about their father, finding solace for a while with Oxford doctoral student Grayson Stepwill Saunder. However, to avoid scandal she must lie and tell the town that he is her cousin. Here the story stalls somewhat as Vienna and Gray murmur to each other in post-coital Latin. In fact, whenever Vienna gets contemplative, as when she compares herself to Medea, it's all too easy for the reader to agree with the townspeople's judgment of her. The children, who are taught at home until finally forced to attend elementary school, are equally supercilious. Of being forced to limit his vocabulary to shorter words in order to avoid ridicule, Elliott says, ``In compositions this makes for staccato sentences that don't scan right. They sound choppy, like when you crenellate the piano keys instead of playing music.'' Thankfully, more space is devoted to the relationships between the family and the community, and Mosby excels at finding the right details. When Vienna is remembering the only divorcÇe she has ever met—and justifying why she is not divorcing her own husband—she recalls their discussion of the Scopes Trial, the woman's liquor flask, and ``her pale, plump hands nervously toying with a silk tassel on one of the pillows on the sofa.'' Occasionally brilliant writing about occasionally annoying characters. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42896-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
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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