More anecdotal than novelistic, it’s too slight to rank with his best, but the Estleman hallmark has always been the quality...
Rowdy Roy Bean, lovely Lillie Langtry—a fine romance with no kisses.
In calling himself “the Law West of the Pecos,” Roy Bean may have overstated but not by much. It was an anarchic time, those last decades of the 19th century, a time when the law was endlessly malleable, pressed into disparate shapes by Colts, Winchesters and idiosyncratic judges. Bean, saloon keeper extraordinaire and oft-elected Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County, was the very model of a Texas-style “hanging judge,” though probably not quite as lethal as legend purports. He did, however, own a huge, old, only partially domesticated bear named Bruno, employed from time to time—in one bizarre way or another—to implement his unorthodox approach to sentencing. Judge Bean was inordinately famous. Three thousand miles away, in England, so was Lillie Langtry. Born Emilie LeBreton on the pastoral British island of Jersey, she became with breathtaking speed the gorgeous “Jersey Lily,” toast of multiple towns on both sides of the Atlantic. She was an actress, and though never in a class with contemporaries Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt when talent was the measure, her looks compensated, made her for years “an attraction as dependable as the crown jewels.” Judge Bean was besotted with her, wrote passionately to her, papered the walls of his establishment with her photographs, named a town after her and longed for the day she would visit him there. Still, is it in fact a love story? Though they never met, Estleman makes a case.
More anecdotal than novelistic, it’s too slight to rank with his best, but the Estleman hallmark has always been the quality of the prose. After 60 or so books (Alone, 2009, etc.) that remains fresh, flavorful and worth the price.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2228-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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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