Pedersen is not at her best in this dull chronicle of family life.
Third installment in the Hallie Palmer series (Heart’s Desire, 2005, etc.) offers more somber subject matter: the death of a parent.
Nearly 19 and studying graphic design at the Cleveland Art Institute, Hallie is summoned from a fraternity party (in this world, art students apparently hang out with jocks and frat boys) by news that her 39-year-old father has suffered a fatal heart attack and her mother is in shock and sedated. Returning home to her nine siblings, Hallie soon realizes that she’ll be bearing the brunt of child-care duties. Older brother Eric must return to college or he’ll lose his scholarship, younger sister Louise has run away to live with her boyfriend at M.I.T., and Mom has been moved to a psychiatric hospital. So Hallie drops out of school and begins as best as she can to raise seven kids on the Palmers’s scant savings. Old friends lend a hand: Bernard Stockton and his boyfriend Gil offer the occasional gourmet meal and showtune-inspired pep talk; old poker buddies Officer Rich and bookie Cappy keep a watchful eye; and Uncle Lenny, a salty sailor the children adore, puts order and laughter back into the grieving household. Finally, Pastor Costello takes over and gives Hallie a much-needed break to work on her deteriorating love life. The two previous books were set among the Stocktons, rich eccentrics with whom Hallie stayed while sorting out her home life. Relegating this wacky clan to the background while Hallie’s large family takes center stage works to this story’s disadvantage. The author devotes many pages to describing the utter chaos created by a large family, but fails to provide the amusing details and memorable characters that would keep all those chores from becoming a chore to read about.
Pedersen is not at her best in this dull chronicle of family life.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-47956-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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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