Fine for Flyy fans who want to know what happened next, but for the rest, a tell-all with not much to tell.
A lifeless successor to the ebullient, street-smart Flyy Girl (1996) delivers a preachy take on the price of success and life in Hollywood.
Tracy Ellison Grant, the original flyy girl, is still hung up on sex, clothes, and the good life, but now she's a movie star and successful screenwriter. Tracy describes the changes in her life through a narrative that moves back and forth between 1996, when she gave up teaching and headed for Hollywood, and 2000, when she's back in Philadelphia visiting her family and the old neighborhood. The 1996 portions show Tracy, English M.A. in hand, storming Tinseltown, determined to be a writer. She doesn't want to be restricted to black shows, but within weeks a lucky break (the first of many) sets her rapidly advancing up the writing hierarchy on a science-fiction series. Flash forward to 2000: her new success means she can't go shopping without being recognized; some family members are jealous; her neighbor, former crack addict Mercedes, wants Tracy to buy her a house; and her friends are moving on: Raheema, an academic, is a happy wife and mother; Kiwana, a former militant, has married a white man. Tracy also meets up with Victor, the love of her life, and although still attracted to him, she realizes they’re not right together—which means that she's lonely, though rich and famous. Back on the coast she lands a savvy and connected agent, writes and sells a screenplay, and then is asked to play the lead. Other Hollywood blacks are envious, and rumors fly, but Tracy can tough it out, then use it to deliver a sermon on work, money, and race. Even more success looms as Tyree’s single-minded heroine takes on new challenges. If only it weren’t all as stale and clichéd as the poetry Tracy relentlessly inserts throughout her prose narrative.
Fine for Flyy fans who want to know what happened next, but for the rest, a tell-all with not much to tell.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-87291-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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