A pointless parable whose message is, Everything you need to know, you can learn in the rose garden. John Blake, age 32, is an ostensibly brilliant ad copywriter who has lost his way in the world. Afraid of ``los[ing] the power to dream,'' he quits his job. His lofty dream? To run his own ad agency. He meets a reclusive millionaire, who utters sub-par bon mots such as ``Don't forget, you can do anything you really believe you can do'' and ``Once you start something you have to work hard.'' The millionaire (who made his debut in Fisher's first book, The Instant Millionaire, not reviewed) is a tender of roses and shows John how to look—really look—at a rose and emphasizes the importance of having faith. The mentor then imparts a mysterious box, just so John can also become rich—not just in spirit, but in cash. John starts his own ad firm and falls in love with his gorgeous assistant, Rachel. But the young disciple must undergo trials: The agency fails, his legs become paralyzed, he loses Rachel. But he starts getting the millionaire's message; he realizes his true goal is to write a screenplay and earn $250,000. (The millionaire aims a bit higher: His script must ``show that God rests in each and every one of us''—no doubt, a big seller in Hollywood.) With a bit of lying and manipulation (after all, John reasons, everyone does it), he sells his screenplay for . . . $400,000. And he reunites with Rachel, too, just in time to prevent her marriage to another man and to watch her give birth to his child. Inspiration confused with motivation, New Age spirituality mixed with old-fashioned ambition and greed. If this is the spirit of the '90s, one can only be grateful that the millennium is upon us.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80281-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Faith-based poetry that aims to inspire.
The word “triumph” can signify both the act of obtaining a victory and the victory itself and the 37 poems and four prose pieces that comprise this book each aim to tap into the duality of the title’s meaning, offering the reader snapshots of success—or the ways in which to obtain it. In clear, unadorned language and simple imagery, the poems reassure the reader that life’s struggles and difficulties will not last forever: the thorn-covered path will eventually clear, as it does in “False Premise”, and the darkness will end with a new light, as in “The Raven Banished”. These hope-laden poems encourage the reader to escape the chaos and violence of the modern world by seeking emotional and spiritual sustenance. For Bell, this nourishment and the calm that accompanies it can only come from faith in God: “My will and mine alone had caused my pain; / Apart from God, I sought for peace in vain”. As a result what transpires is a collection filled with poems depicting domestic refuge (“The Dream”), springtime renewal (“Spring At Last”, “Fragrance”) and recapitulations of the New Testament stories of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection (“It Is Finished”, “Different”, “Judas” and “Rejoice”). Less successful are the four short prose pieces that close the collection, primarily due to their heavy-handed retelling of the biblical tales of Joseph, Pilate and the prodigal son. While this collection offers very little that is new or daring in terms of language and form—limiting itself to a comfort zone of free verse, rhyming couplets and haiku—it does tap into universal questions about our existence. Many may find the heavy Christian message in this volume limiting but readers of a similar mindset to Bell’s may discover that this book sparks spiritual contemplation and personal reflection. A collection with admirable intent.
Pub Date: April 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4415-4232-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, if sometimes spotty, history of the Jews who resided in the Iberian Peninsula until their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. A distinguished scholar and author of many books on modern Jewish history (A History of the Jews in America, 1992), Sachar has done little, if any, original research here, but he nicely synthesizes secondary sources. He shows how the late medieval Convivencia—the period of Jewish-Islamic mutual tolerance and cultural cross-fertilization—gave way to the nationwide pogroms of 1391, in which 30,000 Jews were killed (4,000 in Seville alone). Following this violence, the Inquisition that began in the late 15th century, and the expulsions, Sephardic Jews spread throughout the Mediterranean littoral and the Ottoman Empire, as well as to Holland, England, the Western Hemisphere (in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Inquisition's long arm pursued conversos—crypto- Jews who professed to be practicing Christians—to such places as Lima and Mexico City), and beyond. In almost every country where they settled, the Sephardim incorporated their pride in and yearning for Spain in a distinctive Jewish language, Ladino. Sachar's strengths include succinct and informative discussions of Sephardic communal and intellectual history, his excellent unfolding of the Inquisition's complex history, and his many colorful anecdotes of the Sephardic ``rich and famous.'' However, his coverage of the middle class and poor, of Sephardic women, and of the early modern period (16501850) is weak and, occasionally, embarrassingly clichÇd (he claims that ``by the eighteenth century, the Jews of Italy had become superstitious, neurotic, timorous''). Finally, he ``takes a stab'' at discussing the contemporary Sephardic communities of Israel and France (but not, puzzlingly, of the US, where about 200,000 Sephardim live), but this too is so brief as to be greatly inadequate. A more detailed and comprehensive history of Sephardic Jewry waits to be written. For now, Farewell Espa§a provides a quick introduction that, if a little light in terms of scholarship, contains a fluid and often fascinating narrative.
Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40960-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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