This prolific author (Fair Peril, 1996, etc. etc.) has a remarkably vivid style, but it's not enough to sustain a plot this...
A feminist tale about a middle-aged housewife who’s abandoned by her philandering husband.
So frumpy Sassy Hummel struggles into an ill-fitting pink polyester uniform and goes to work as a maid in an immense, pretentious hotel. The drudgery is endless, although after 27 years of a miserable marriage, it's apparently all she knows how to do. Sassy is befriended by Racquel, the transvestite owner of the hotel boutique selling fabulous feathered dresses and accessories; but Racquel's flamboyant manner and outrageous get-ups make Sassy feel all the dowdier. Life just can't get any worse, it seems—until the day a lost parakeet poops on Sassy's head. It's magic doo-doo, however, which bestows upon Sassy the amazing ability to see the inner birds of others. Racquel, for example, is a hornbill. And when Sassy looks in the mirror, she sees the reflection of an ordinary little budgie. Then the mirror's surface shimmers . . . and dissolves . . . and Sassy steps through it into a mysterious parallel world, a lush jungle where extinct birds like moas and ivory-billed woodpeckers and passenger pigeons still live. There, she encounters heretofore hidden aspects of herself: a strange nature deity bedecked with brilliant feathers, a glorious bird of paradise, and so forth. Eventually, Racquel joins Sassy (and feels right at home). For a while, then, the two pop back and forth between the mirror world and mundane reality. Meantime, Sassy's husband—clueless and flightless—chases after the reluctant Racquel, while Sassy talks it all over with Lydia, a local bird-lover. Yes, the heroine learns to spread her wings and fly again, and there are lots of other well-worn symbols of newfound freedom.
This prolific author (Fair Peril, 1996, etc. etc.) has a remarkably vivid style, but it's not enough to sustain a plot this thin. And passages written from the point of view of the lost parakeet are plain silly: “At this singproud pairdance time, Kleet felt his loneliness most keenly.”Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-380-80120-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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