From the ever-appealing and underappreciated Kotker (Miss Rhode Island, 1978; Learning About God, 1988, etc.), a lightly rendered but unflinching tale of love—and its hazards—in the golden years of life. At 69, Billy Symmes is a widower, retired bandleader-clarinetist, and absentee landlord of a modestly profitable apartment house in Boston, his hometown. The ``absentee'' is because Billy has chosen to retire to Florida—where he's become involved with (engaged to, no less) the blond and still plenty good-looking Joyce Tarlow (67), herself from New York City. What could possibly stand in the way of wedded bliss for these no longer young but still active (and how) lovers? Kotker's alluringly spare short novel will give you the long—and much more complicated- -answer; for the short answer, though, enter Joyce's son Roy, graduate of no known charm school, connoisseur of the fast move (in real estate especially), and friend of the thuggish operator Dennis—who'll do anything to push Billy into turning his Boston apartment house into condos before the city's conversion law changes. What neither Roy nor Dennis counts on, though, is the real goodness in the tough—and toughly loving—Billy, who bravely (and with some real danger) holds the pair off, choosing decency over the easy million or so that would be sure to result in the eviction of old tenants and friends. In the meantime, what happens to romance? Does well-off Joyce still think the world of Billy after she feels almost ``like crying'' when son Roy tells her that Billy is `` `different from us, you know what I mean,' '' and then turns the knife by adding, `` `Your boyfriend doesn't know how to live the big-ticket life' ''? Whatever happens, readers will know more than they ever imagined they could or would about Joyce, Billy, passion—and what comes at the end of all things. Short, pitch-perfect, amusing—and wonderfully, briefly moving. Another small gem from the estimable Kotker.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-944072-68-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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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