Methodically paced, a story that never lags while engaging readers with unshakable characters.
In Banister’s (My Brother’s Keeper, 2013) drama, a teen suspects that his adoptive father may have kidnapped him when he was a young boy.
Dushan Sava hardly remembers his mother, Marta, who was abducted by a Yugoslav army unit when Dushan was an infant. Foster dad Burt Sandor tells Dushan that his birth father, Dimitri, gave him up for adoption and is presumed dead after his fishing boat was lost at sea. But years ago, Burt had enlisted his cousin Carolyn Markos—already in legal troubles for her “unofficial adoption office in Liverpool”—to find him a son. So Carolyn used a babysitter gig to take 4-year-old Dushan from the Isle of Man to San Francisco. By the time Dushan and stepbrother Dani are in high school, they hope to escape the abusive Burt and track down Dushan’s parents, both of whom he believes are alive. Banister’s linear narrative abandons any pretense of mystery: readers are often ahead of the characters, as with knowing that Marta is indeed still alive. There’s still some suspense, however, particularly with readers’ knowledge of Burt’s shadiness. Banister’s novel features different levels of villainy. Burt, for one, is unquestionably evil, wanting to “replace” his leukemia-stricken son, Markos, before he dies so that monthly payments for his sons’ trust fund (set up by Burt’s mother) aren’t interrupted. Carolyn, meanwhile, is simply desperate, needing cash to pay off thuggish Mr. Aksoy. Dushan speaks to his parents in dreams and has “shared dreams” with Dani, but Banister wisely keeps these scenes vague, never confirming a psychic link. The relationship between the stepbrothers is well-developed and the most convincing element, resonating louder than Dushan’s hope that he’ll one day reunite with the parents he barely knows. When Dushan and Dani break free, at least momentarily, from Burt, the two get separated, resulting in the book’s most dramatic turn of events. Readers will want Dushan to find Dimitri and Marta, but it’s more imperative that the brothers, who together have endured abuse and tragedy, are side by side by book’s end.
Methodically paced, a story that never lags while engaging readers with unshakable characters.Pub Date: March 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941713-16-7
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Andrew Benzie Books
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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