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CHILDISH THINGS

Name: CHILDISH THINGS
Author: Marita van der Vyver
ISBN: 0-525-94148-7

by Marita van der Vyver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 19, 1996

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From the author of Entertaining Angels (1995), a bittersweet if at times pretentious evocation of adolescence in South Africa in the '70s, a time of violent upheavals. Narrator Mart Vermaak, separated from her husband, is living in London with her young son in the 1990s, homesick but fearful of the violence that still threatens to destroy her native land. She begins her story with a recollection of her first day as a 16-year- old at the drab hostel attached to the local high school, when she met her roommate, the fearless and free-spirited Dalena. Mart's recollections alternate with letters written in the recent past (199293) to a nameless figure who will soon be 17, the same age the child's mother was when she was born. The letters, rounded out with newspaper quotes and political commentary, are with few exceptions sententious and self-conscious, and the identity of the child is soon apparent. The recollections, though, with their evocations of the Afrikaner noveau riche, and of the tedium and trauma of adolescence, give the story an appealing freshness. Mart's parents live, like Dalena's, on a farm; they are loyal Afrikaners who have never questioned apartheid, but their children are different. Simon, Mart's elder brother (with whom Dalena falls in love), participates in South Africa's incursion into Angola, then, disillusioned, joins the liberation struggle. His even more skeptical friend Pierre, Mart's first love, is killed fighting; Dalena, pregnant, leaves school and gives up her child for adoption; and Mart, as riots break out in Soweto, sadly realizes that she is coming of age in a world where the usual teenage crises have been superseded by more urgent, and far more grave, realities. An engaging account of adolescence, those fraught years when everything is deadly serious and nothing can be taken for granted- -especially in a place like South Africa.

Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1996

ISBN: 0-525-94148-7

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.