The politics will be familiar to those who have followed Africa’s crises (or seen Hotel Rwanda), but where Benaron shines is...
Benaron’s first novel, about a young Rwandan runner whose Olympic ambitions collide with his country’s political unrest, is the recipient of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for “fiction that addresses issues of social justice.”
In the 1980s, Jean Patrick Nkuba and his older brother Roger are both talented athletes and scholars living an idyllic existence with their Tutsi parents at the school where their father teaches. Then Jean Patrick’s father dies in a car crash just as tensions begin to build between the Tutsis and Hutus. Although the Tutsis are increasingly discriminated against, Jean Patrick’s running talent sets him above the fray, especially after his Olympic potential is recognized in his early teens. Even Roger, who has joined the Tutsi Rebels, wants Jean Patrick to do whatever it takes to represent Rwanda in the Olympics. So Jean Patrick follows his Hutu Coach from high school to college. At first Coach arranges for Jean Patrick to have false Hutu identification papers. Then the government decides that allowing a Tutsi to complete internationally will bolster its human-rights reputation so Jean Patrick is made the Tutsi exception and treated like a beloved celebrity. He even attends a reception with the president. Meanwhile he has fallen in love with Bea despite Coach’s disapproval—Bea and her journalist father are Hutu dissidents against the repressive Hutu government—and made friends with a visiting professor from Boston. As the conflict intensifies, Jean Patrick must make increasingly difficult choices, a key one being whether to trust Coach. The escalating violence of Hutus against Tutsis becomes a national mania that ultimately controls Jean Patrick’s personal destiny.
The politics will be familiar to those who have followed Africa’s crises (or seen Hotel Rwanda), but where Benaron shines is in her tender descriptions of Rwandan’s natural beauty and in her creation of Jean Patrick, a hero whose noble innocence and genuine human warmth are impossible not to love.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61620-042-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
PROFILES
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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