A comical, honest love story between two lost souls who complete each other.
A beautifully woven novel about an unusual boy and how he finds his way.
Love for one’s mother does not always come easily, and such is the case for Jeromeo “Jerry” Clover in K.’s (Honey B., 2012, etc.) lyrical novel. Jerry’s mother, Helen, a flower child, rejects society’s expectations: She had Jerry as a single mom and changes her name to Starlight. She left Jerry in the care of her mother, Eileen, who raises him with the help of her second husband, Carl, with so much love that Jerry doesn’t even miss his mother or mind her absence. He comes to see Starlight as someone who found “the real world an interesting place to hang out for a while, appreciating the customs of its citizens enough to visit but not stay.” Starlight visits Jerry sporadically, but she’s mostly a nonentity in his life, and it’s his stepgrandfather who ensures that Jerry goes to college. Upon graduating, Jerry begins working, first as the manager of a small chain of batting cages, where he quickly learns how to turn an average business into something more successful. He enjoys the work until an injury forces him to leave and find something new; he eventually enters the towing business. Tragedy strikes suddenly when Carl dies of an aneurysm, and things begin to shift dramatically for Jerry, who is now 30. Eileen decides to take in a young divorced woman, Rose Hardeen, and her two kids, to live with her and Jerry. As the families live side by side, a romance ignites between Jerry and Rose. Told in a poetic and insightful manner, Jerry’s story is funny and touching as the young man learns to find his way through relationships, having had such disrupted ones of his own. As he learns to be a father, without having really been a son, Jerry learns a lot about himself and the people around him.
A comical, honest love story between two lost souls who complete each other.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466220157
Page Count: 180
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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