A compelling, lyrical, and resonant debut.
Each summer during the 1930s and '40s, men from Japan, the Philippines, Russia, Scandinavia, and Washington state flocked to the Yup’ik hamlet of Nushagak Village in Alaska’s Bristol Bay to work in local canneries.
For well-trained fisherperson Anne Girl and her mother, Marulia, both Native Alaskans, the arrival of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian named John Nelson sets the wheels of profound change into motion. Teenage Anne Girl starts seeing John in secret, but eventually the liaison becomes public. Disapproving Marulia wants to know if John is “good for anything” since he seems ill-suited for both sea and factory life. Even more concerning, Marulia worries that John may be an undercover missionary since he's staying with Frederik and Nora Killweather, Christian evangelists eager to bring the populace to Christ. But Anne Girl doesn’t care. John is an ace storyteller, and she finds his intricate tales enchanting. Soon, the two marry and have a child. Throughout, Anne Girl continues to fish and teaches her daughter everything she knows about preparing nets, catching salmon, readying a boat to set sail, and reading tides and weather patterns. John, meanwhile, learns to fly and becomes the area’s sole pilot, ferrying food, medicine, mail, and sundries between the remote village and the large trading post in Dillingham. It’s an intriguing and important window into life among an Indigenous people and beautifully illustrates the push and pull of assimilation in pre-state Alaska. At the same time, since the action begins in 1939 and continues into the late 1940s, the narrative’s omission of World War II seems odd. Still, the depiction of the customs and oral traditions of the community make this a fascinating coming-of-age story, touching upon sexuality, gender, death, friendship, alcoholism, and the inevitability of cultural shifts.
A compelling, lyrical, and resonant debut.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59709-809-0
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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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