Almost like an offshore Peyton Place at times, but also a well-crafted tale, subtle and memorable, that should have a broad...
Sensitive debut novel (selected by Barnes & Noble for its Winter Discover Program) about a young woman’s coming of age during WWII on an island in Narragansett Bay.
Snow Island, off Rhode Island, is not especially remote, but in the 1940s it is still without telephones and only recently has gotten electricity. There's only one store, run by Evelyn Daggett—or, rather, by Evelyn’s infinitely more efficient daughter Alice. The Daggett shop, like most of Snow Island, lives off the summer trade and gets by on credit for the rest of the year, for there are fewer than a hundred full-year residents to make up their trade. These include a fair share of oddballs, like the quahogger Owen Pierce, who practically lives on his boat and has a personal anecdote on just about any subject. There are also the usual dark scandals, like that of the Tibbits sisters, Grace and Bertha, who were found dead (one by suicide, the other of natural causes) in their twin houses one day in 1919 by their nephew George, a mainlander who has made an annual pilgrimage back ever since. It’s not a very exciting place to grow up, but Alice enjoys running the shop and acting as postmistress, and she finds herself more and more drawn to handsome Ethan Cunningham, an island boy who went off to college and returned to look after his sick mother after his father died. Alice’s best friend is Lydia Giberson, whose brother Pete is in love with Alice. But Alice becomes Ethan’s lover instead, discovering only after he moves away that she's pregnant. Pete offers to marry her, but Alice arranges to give the child up for adoption. Eventually she discovers that Ethan is married, while Pete is soon to ship off with the Navy. Should she really give the baby up?
Almost like an offshore Peyton Place at times, but also a well-crafted tale, subtle and memorable, that should have a broad appeal.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-931561-01-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
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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