A half-baked idea of a book fails to allow this writer the venue to prove what he might do.
Disjointed anecdotes of mostly prurient interest about the ne’er-do-well of Seattle are hard-pressed to comprise a first novel.
McIntosh traces the random beddings and offhanded dialogue of people who frequent a bar called the Trolley near Federal Way: aging sports fans, Vietnam vets, cancer victims, waitresses, and ex-boxers who are often strung-out and usually horny. The chapters grouped as “It’s Taking So Damn Long To Get Here” function as the leitmotiv to these characters’ unnamable longings, which might be summed up by one speaker: “I worry I’m going to be waiting so long I’ll forget what I’m waiting for.” The people drink (and try to score drugs), vituperate, and writhe. Gradually, some patterns do take shape, and a few characters even assume a more fleshed-out dimension, such as the group of male drinking buddies who appear individually throughout, then end up together at the Trolley after the funeral of a friend who has committed suicide (“The Border”). The dialogue of these men, about sports and wife troubles, as they eye the waitress, could have been recorded on a soiled cocktail napkin. In “Vitality,” a young man in chronic pain from a high-school diving accident recognizes that stroking his constant suffering is the one great love and purpose of his life. Elsewhere, “Fishboy,” which first appeared in Playboy and provides the novel with its one well-developed narrative, follows a lonely teenager’s creepy obsession with a girl from high school as he sets off to fisheries school in Nebraska. In “Looking Out for Your Own,” McIntosh defies his sardonic lassitude by offering an affecting portrayal of a gawky young man who pursues an awkward sexual initiation with his girlfriend. These characters in general seem meant less to be lovable than pathetic. But their too-brief expressions of existential anxiety seem merely impressions, lacking a substance sufficient to move the reader.
A half-baked idea of a book fails to allow this writer the venue to prove what he might do.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-8021-1751-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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
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