Not for everyone, but readers seeking out a truly innovative creative model for literature will plunge down this rabbit hole...
A Muslim man struggles with culture and identity in the City of Lights in this urbanely complex study by Algerian feminist writer Marouane (The Abductor, 2001, etc.).
The novel opens with a man anxious about renting an apartment in the stylish Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris, offering up glimpses of his self-seeking personality. “I walked over the wide open door to the balcony, and once again had the impression I was in a film,” he tells us. “Would I be the hero, or just a mere extra?” This man has reinvented himself as Basile Tocquard, a wealthy bank manager with bleached skin and good suits. We soon learn his true identity as Mohamed Ben Mokhtar, an Algerian born in Maghreb who has, as he puts it, “Frenchified” himself. “I was the good Muslim, the kind Islamist—nowadays we would say ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘terrorist’—who was respected and solicited for advice by the entire neighborhood,” he reveals. But this unlikely leading man is on a self-indulgent streak. He is a virgin determined to bed as many women as possible; a son devoted to unshackling himself from his mother’s authoritarian advice; and a budding hedonist enjoying the finer things that Paris has to offer. It’s not long before it’s apparent that something is amiss with Tocquard’s story—all of his descriptions of the women he meets are centered on curves rather than personality, with the sole exception of a 40-something writer, Loubna Minbar, who intimates herself into Mokhtar’s new life by way of third parties. The question emerges whether our narrator’s story is truly his own, or whether it’s being interpreted by the mysterious other who waits in the wings of this sophisticated but intricate text.
Not for everyone, but readers seeking out a truly innovative creative model for literature will plunge down this rabbit hole with abandon.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-933372-85-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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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