Amusing story of a Masai tribe living in an Alabama doctor's backyard. Second-novelist Shulman (What? Dead Again?, 1980) also wrote the script for Doc Hollywood. Here, Shulman weaves two themes into one tale. The first is the spread of electronics even to a remote African village; the second shows the effect of primitive life on civilization when an African tribe moves itself to the States. Dr. Bud Pane and his gardener wife Gail take a vacation in the African bush, where Bud's instantly dragooned by medical nuns and finds himself drowned in work as he sews up a Masai warrior shredded by a lion. Adopted by the tribe, he begs them to allow him to take shining, 11-year-old Hope to Alabama, where surgery can save her rheumatic heart from its failing mitral valve. Bud passes through disgusting ceremonies and now bears his own spear and shield, so the tribe lets Hope go. When he and Gail fly home, he leaves his gold card with a travel agent to cover Hope's flight. Surprise, not only Hope but her medicine man, family, and many tribal members accompany her on the gold card to the doctor's home and set themselves up in his backyard, where they build mud huts in Gail's flower garden. The fun involves the tribal medicine man working in a modern hospital's emergency room and bringing his ancient medical wisdom to bear on the wounded. Also, Masai believe that they own all the cows on earth, and so begin herding local cows into Bud's backyard. The climax brings on Oprah Winfrey and Global News Network broadcasting from Hope's operating room and the Masai village in Africa both at once. Much funnier than it has any right to be, perhaps because Shulman somewhat restrains the ersatz uproar and totally stupid plot, much like those in Max Shulman's witless old squirrel-houses, Barefoot Boy with Cheek and Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!
Pub Date: March 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-10513-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
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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