Some startling scenes and enchanting writing, but Flook's depiction of feeble psyches and unending despair ultimately...
As in Flook's first novel (Family Night, 1993), a dark, strong start lapses into weary complacency as the characters' weaknesses prove insurmountable and addictions to drugs, sex, and loss become their guiding lights.
After Willis gets dishonorably discharged from the Navy for pilfering from a supply warehouse, he goes to his stepmother's home in Newport, R.I. While he claims to be returning to care for Rennie, who took him in after his father died when he was 13, she seems more capable of dealing with her fast-approaching death from cancer than Willis, whose resolve to keep up a good front is further eroded by the constant pain in his arm from a carelessly self-inflicted fracture. Rennie, who seems to need his dependency more than his strength, invites Willis to sample her supply of morphine, and he becomes immediately addicted. Enter a neighbor named Holly, transfixed by the goings-on across the street. All three characters battle to escape their demons. Rennie suffers under the mocking title ``Kiss of Death,'' awarded to any woman who's had two husbands die at sea (she even had a third, Willis's father, expire unexpectedly from a heart attack), and fights to prevent her biological son from putting her in a rest home and taking away her seaside house. Willis struggles to come to terms with his mother's death, a freak accident provoked by his father's violence, and searches for anything that will fill his emptiness, turning to meaningless sex and dangerous, shady business deals. Holly tries to start over after her husband leaves her to buy Carvel Ice Cream franchises with his new, rich lover. The three misfits become intimate, and as each works to keep the others afloat, they discover deeper failings and hidden strengths.
Some startling scenes and enchanting writing, but Flook's depiction of feeble psyches and unending despair ultimately anesthetizes the reader.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43183-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
