A beautifully written, engrossing family epic that’s a bit slow and tangled with its own literary devices.
A slow, sweeping family tale spanning continents and generations.
Young’s debut novel first centers on Bernard, a sensitive carpenter in 1950s Canada. Though he’s deaf, he hears a melody one night as he slumbers. The haunting song leads him to a long sojourn in the woods, where he stumbles upon decades-old secrets. But he’s not the only one in his family enchanted by a distant, dreamlike tune. The tale jumps back and forth in time and geography, with his family’s story beginning in a French convent in 1859 and ending in present-day Australia. Bernard’s family is carefully traced, and the relationships among its members are revealed in elegant, finely crafted prose. There’s Adrienne, a French nun grappling with her vows; Isabelle, a young orphan who leaves Europe for Canada with a mysterious uncle; and Walk-Tall, a young Iroquois man with a tragic end. There are others, too, and their stories—illicit love affairs, sham marriages, mission trips to Asia—are set against a background of war, religion and, most importantly, music. Everyone is in some way connected to a guitar, either as a virtuoso or a child of one. Every guitar, it seems, is magical—when they’re in need of comfort or guidance, characters constantly swear they’ve heard their guitar play on its own—and the instruments are considered the most prized possessions, worshipped for their sound (“angels and ordinary men wept from the sheer beauty”) and sentiment. That adulation can be a bit much; some characters even sleep with their guitars like blankets, and one character’s playing unrealistically creates peace between angry Nepalese soldiers and traveling missionaries. Beyond the power of music and the nostalgia of familial possessions, the story’s progress often feels like an afterthought to Young’s focus on symbolism. Guitars might be what bind this family, but for the story, they’re more of a hindrance than an adhesive.
A beautifully written, engrossing family epic that’s a bit slow and tangled with its own literary devices.Pub Date: June 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1592999378
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2013
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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