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IT WILL BE ALL RIGHT IN THE MORNING

Name: IT WILL BE ALL RIGHT IN THE MORNING
Author: Michael Burns
ISBN: 1-55728-516-0

by Michael Burns ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1998

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The short-lines of Burns’s short little poems nicely capture the Southern, country moods of his plaintive voices—not unlike the hard-drinking, love-losing moans of popular country music. As —Apology— makes clear: this Southwest Missouri State prof, with his near-divorces and other personal excesses, is no one to turn to for advice. A self-described —gonzo, good-for-nothing, good-old-boy,— Burns, who’s published three previous books of poems, tries to stir his —dormant heart— by bursting a grape in his mouth while watching porn on cable TV. In eminently likeable tones, Burns continually undercuts all gestures towards sentimentality. —On Tenderness, and Timing— contemplates the sorrow implicit in Missouri’s new license plates, which is alleviated by the beauty of butterflies, themselves soon dead in car grills and windshield wipers. Burns discerns the aches and wounds in everyday life that lurk beneath the pleasant surfaces: a lovely plum tree dies from a storm, itself a trope of nature’s ferocity. Burns assumes a number of voices that resonate through time: a duck hunter who finds a lovelorn Robert Frost lost in the swamp; a Northern General from the Civil War massaging old wounds; a fellow who robs Indian graves spooked by the family bones he finds; and a Snopes who visits Faulkner’s house and fears the ghost he sees. Burns’s masculine verse, with its shotgun ecstasy and —the smell of dead snake/and defoliant,— endears itself with its easy- going rhythms and sneaky-pete rhymes.

Pub Date: July 1, 1998

ISBN: 1-55728-516-0

Page Count: 80

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SANCTUM SANCTORUM
by Michael Burns

- BOOK REVIEW
DREYFUS
by Michael Burns

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

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- SEEN & HEARD
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- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.