Consistently lukewarm plot and painfully tidy conclusion, but Junior’s character is strongly written, and Wells’s sense of...
A mildly interesting concoction from the author of Meely LaBauve (2000), this one featuring a down-and-out roustabout, a Mafia murder, and true love in the heart of a hard man, all of it fed through spicy regional dialect and local coloration.
As we meet Joseph “Junior” Guidry, he lies flat-out broke, drunk, and in despair after losing his leg in a Gulf of Mexico oil rig accident. He successfully sued the oil company with the help of his lawyer, Syd Shainburg, and won a $150,000 settlement, but Junior blew it on drinks, women, and cars. Now he’s waiting for something to come along that will change his situation. Through the bayou to Junior’s trailer in the Great Catahoula Swamp comes Iris Mary Parfait, who imposes herself into his life—cooking, cleaning, and slowly healing him—but promises to stay out of his “business.” The agreement doesn’t hold, and soon Iris reveals she is on the run from a bar owner with Mob connections. While tending to Rocko Marchante’s ailing mother, Iris saw the sexual terrors he inflicted on his women and was nearly subjected to them herself before she managed to injure Rocko and escape his horrific household. Just as Junior is starting to feel her pain and sharing some of his hurt with her, a “podnuh” shows up with news that Rocko has put a $100,000 bounty on Iris’s head. She’s captured, but Junior rescues her in a violent encounter that leaves Rocko and his men desperately wounded. Lawyer Shainburg shows up again, pulls some strings, does some research, and eventually brings down Rocko and the local Sheriff Ervil Geaux, leaving Junior and Iris free to marry and come to terms with their traumatic lives.
Consistently lukewarm plot and painfully tidy conclusion, but Junior’s character is strongly written, and Wells’s sense of place confers a pleasing authority to his Cajun-style prose.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50526-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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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