A pleasant take on the vanity of human wishes: well conceived, nicely wrapped up.
From second-novelist Stella (Fat Bald Jeff, 2001): a good-natured comedy about social climbing as a nice girl from Chicago’s South Side gets taken up by the glitterati.
Despite the subtitle, there’s actually not much room for leisure in the world of budding fashionista Lisa Galisa. A junior sales clerk in Women’s Wear at Fishman’s Department Store, Lisa grew up in retailing—as the daughter of a small shopkeeper in a working-class neighborhood. Living now on the North Side and (horror of horrors) rooting for the Cubs, Lisa has put much of her proletarian past behind her, but she still has a ways to go. Her gay sidekick Tim Gideon will poke her occasionally when she lapses into a South Side accent, and she’s never lost her taste for Old Style beer. But Lisa is thrust into the limelight when her boss notices her resemblance to Maria Callas and uses her as a living model of the late diva in promoting the store’s new spring line—which is in the Greek mode. Offhand by nature, Lisa masters the needed air of mystery and hauteur, though she has to contend both with the malevolence of a vicious society columnist (on whose shoes she once vomited) and with the jealousy of the Men’s Wear supervisor (who came up with the Greek motif and had his idea stolen by Lisa’s boss). But she succeeds well enough to be taken up by society hostess Honey Dietrich, who hires her as a personal assistant and sets her to planning an annual Christmas gala. Has Lisa found her true place in society? Or is she rising for a fall? Perhaps she should concentrate less on the dolce vita of the North Shore and pay a bit more attention to schoolteacher/janitor Ray Fuchet, the admirer who fell for her while playing Ari Onassis in the Fishman’s campaign.
A pleasant take on the vanity of human wishes: well conceived, nicely wrapped up.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-609-80972-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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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