Witty and fascinating in its treatment of realpolitik, but quickly loses itself in a mash of excess.
A likably preposterous roman-à-clef, by a former U.K. government press secretary, takes aim at spin and dirty tricks in politics.
After losing his post in a whistle-blowing scandal after he’d publicly shamed spin-doctor Jo Moore (notorious for advising on 9/11 that “this would be a good day to bury bad news”), author Sixsmith was pressured into signing a gag clause that prevented him from airing any further dirty Labour laundry. Here, in a first novel, he attempts to circumvent that restriction. The action is projected into the near future, with Labour renamed the New Project Party. The plot quickly departs from actual events, taking us to an imagined time when spin-doctoring cosmeticizes a eugenics program designed to eradicate people with genetic markers for criminal tendencies. The backroom deals and press manipulation, however, carry a strong stench of real life, and the attendant chicanery is handled with a light touch and an obvious familiarity. But the story soon escapes from the bounds of probability as the sleaze practiced by high-ranking politicians escalates to pedophilia, cocaine smuggling and murder, while civil servants are recruited to departments chiefly on the basis of their blackmail-ability. Inconvenient characters are dispensed with by their falling prey to a government-engineered scandal. The central story concerns the career of unscrupulous M.P. Selwyn Knox. Helped by his sidekick and lover, the luscious spin-doctor Sonya Mair, he rises to become head of the newly created Department for Society, intended to eradicate all undesirable social behavior from the British masses. Beginning with a wry depiction of the pair’s dirty tricks, the story eventually—and unadvisedly—becomes embroiled in psychological explanations for Knox’s foul deeds. Before long, both author and characters are delivering lengthy speeches (and sending lengthy e-mails) on moral hubris and original sin.
Witty and fascinating in its treatment of realpolitik, but quickly loses itself in a mash of excess.Pub Date: May 15, 2005
ISBN: 1-4050-4119-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Macmillan UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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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