A tart and persuasive portrait of an uncertain young woman's discovery of her heart's true needs. This is not new terrain for Wesley (An Imaginative Experience, 1995, A Dubious Legacy, 1992, etc.), who has often before tracked characters stumbling along the long path to something like real love. No one does it better: Her prose is simple and precise, her view of love's varying needs and confusions exact, her skewering of human foibles amused and exact. Juno Marlowe is, as the novel opens, attempting to escape an air raid. She is in London, in the early days of World War II, and has just said farewell to two young men going off to join their regiment. She has loved both Jonty and Francis since childhood; they, having decided with the chilling ruthlessness of youth that it won't do to go off to war as virgins, have managed to talk the insecure Juno into sleeping with both of them. Juno is given shelter during the air raid by Evelyn Copplestone, a polished, evidently wealthy, dour individual, who is also mortally ill. He makes Juno promise to take a letter to his father in the country, and dies before morning. Partly as an excuse to avoid being shipped off to Canada, and away from Jonty and Francis, the until-now pliable Juno pursues her quixotic mission, showing a surprising independence. Robert Copplestone, despite his despair at the loss of his wife and, now, his son, gives Juno shelter. His odd, somewhat raffish household begins to arouse her exuberant enjoyment of life; to her amazement, Juno, at first stunned by the discovery that her night with Jonty and Francis has left her pregnant, begins to develop a new frankness and sense of purpose. Amazed, she finds herself deeply attracted to Robert. It's some testament to Wesley's skill that the unlikely romance between Robert and Juno seems both right and entirely believable. An elegant, satisfying entertainment.
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-87363-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
PERSPECTIVES
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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