A haunting reminder about the loss of innocence.
In Skomal’s (Bluff, 2012, etc.) YA novel, a group of children in a small Midwestern town learns about the harsh realities of life after the Korean War.
The children of Sand Flats, Neb., may be off from school for the summer, but they’re definitely not on vacation. It’s 1954, and Hap, Patsy, Beah and Raz meet amid the fallout of the Korean War, which has ravaged their lives. Hap, who looks “like a wax museum statue of Peter Pan,” is as lost and motherless as the boy who wouldn’t grow up. He’s abused by his father and tries to build his own, better world. Hotheaded Patsy just moved to town (after being suspended from her last school for fighting) and must learn to deal with her brother’s serious injury, which he sustained during the war and has sent him to the VA hospital. She also must come to terms with her brother’s secrets, which threaten the family’s stability. Then there are Beah, who lives in the shadow of her deceased older brother, and Raz, who is Jewish and has an “innate beauty” that sets her apart from the others. This coming-of-age story follows the group’s members, who meet for the first time that fateful summer and contend with murder, lies from their parents, lies to their parents, missing limbs, homosexuality, theft and abuse. Together, they learn the importance of friendship, truth and honesty, and they also learn that life is rarely easy. It’s a dark story about a dark world, but Skomal makes the story readable and lovely via her prose. Sand Flats—a deep-rooted cattle-farming community 20 miles from Omaha that “came to life thanks to the Union Pacific Railroad’s western push to develop the rail clear to California in the late 1800s”—itself becomes a main character. By placing this group of children, their parents and other townspeople in this distinct geographic location, Skomal has created a world that couldn’t take place anywhere else.
A haunting reminder about the loss of innocence.Pub Date: March 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1478192497
Page Count: 290
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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