Three novellas by three Brits reminding us that the most ordinary-seeming people may lead lives of private drama. Bovine Brenda, the middle-aged spinster in Wakefield's (Lot's Wife, not reviewed) ``The Other Way,'' leaves her linoleum kitchen for a Tunisian holiday after winning the grand prize in a contest she had entered with the hope of winning the consolation appliance. Dowdy-by-day book editor Mary is a silk-stockinged mistress whose freedom and established habits are disrupted by her magnate lover's marriage proposal in ``Caesar's Wife'' by Gale (Kansas in August, 1988, etc.). Both ladies, for whom routine is a comfortable shoe, react dramatically to their new circumstances. Brenda flees her garish tour group for the quiet companionship of an aging homosexual gentleman and, in an odd maelstrom between otherwise comedic and contemplative pages, has a shocking epiphany. Mary panics and, with the help of her lover's gay, wheelchair-bound son, Josh (who is her close friend), cooks up a wacky scheme so she can have her cake and eat it too. The theme of secrecy applies to gays (featured with varying prominence in each story) as well as to misunderstood women. Homosexuality is most directly dealt with in the title story by King (Punishments, 1990, etc.), in which Brian, a closeted barrister, dies of AIDS, fearing to the end rejection from friends, family, and his beleaguered Japanese lover, Osamu. All three novellas are humorous and moving, but Gale's glows with a subtle polish the others lack. He's overcome the heavy-handed polemicism of his longer fiction and focused on telling the story, a fluid and wry tale. ``People aren't what you think they are,'' remarks Brenda's narrow sister. Nor are books, as Secret Lives proves: At arm's length, it's hodgepodge; up close, intricate patterns emerge.
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-85242-215-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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