A little too pat and intermittently predictable to qualify for Masterpiece Theater. But the BBC should be quick to snap it...
An immensely readable debut, a kind of British Rich Man, Poor Man, set during the early days of the Battle of Britain.
Twin brothers William and Tom Anderson, who will prove quite different temperamentally, are born in 1918 to the sound of armistice bells ringing in the end of WWI. In brief chapters summarizing events of succeeding years, we observe the boys’ childhood through early manhood—often through the eyes of their gossipy neighbors, widowed Marigold Jennings and spinster “Miss Betty.” Corrick overuses this catty pair, though once in a while their pseudoaphoristic observations strike home (e.g., “Devotion is no basis for marriage,” a perverse truism illustrated by the boys’ incompatible parents). Through 1939, we watch William turn scholarly and “poetic” (with a taste for Tennyson), while Tom surrenders himself to the poetry of aviation. The bulk of the tale covers the year 1940, as Tom becomes a Spitfire pilot hopefully pursuing an elusive woman flyer. William, meanwhile, marries an older woman doctor and secures a teaching position at Liberty Hall, a progressive school for preadolescents run by a Panglossian, Blake-quoting obsessive and eccentric neatly named Masterman (“My pedagogic aim is the abolition of irrational belief”). Parallel scenes (often too brief to fully register) detail Tom’s fateful progression toward an airfight over the English Channel, and the mock-Chaucerian “pilgrimage” to Canterbury undertaken by Masterman and company when Liberty Hall is commandeered by the British Army. The introduction of such marginally involved, though thematically crucial, characters as rescued Polish refugee Janosz Pasenik intensifies the skillfully tangled separate stories, which dovetail toward a satisfying close, in a momentarily peaceful churchyard echoing with complex images of death and rebirth.
A little too pat and intermittently predictable to qualify for Masterpiece Theater. But the BBC should be quick to snap it up.Pub Date: April 29, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50812-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
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
© 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.
