First mainstream outing—a family drama with a touch of the supernatural—from the leading fantasist (the Alvin Maker series) and sf writer (The Memory of Earth, p. 81). Devout Mormon Step Fletcher, designer of a successful computer game called Hacker Snack, moves with his family to Steuben, North Carolina, to take up a new job. To Step's dismay, he is urged to accept a contract signing away his rights; he also discovers that his sole function will be to write manuals. Step and his wife DeAnne, now seven months pregnant, are given a warm welcome by their church—but eldest son Stevie (8) experiences difficulties at school and becomes withdrawn. At church, DeAnne fends off the meddlesome, self-proclaimed visionary Sister LeSueur, while Step has problems with Lee, who thinks he's God and wants to baptize Stevie; Step also meets a whiz programmer who calls himself Saladin Gallowglass (despite his talents, Glass turns out to be a child molester); and through it all, the house the Fletchers rent is subject to periodic horrid invasions of insects. Frustrated and exasperated, Step quits his job, intending instead to upgrade Hacker Snack for a new PC range. Meanwhile, Steuben is haunted by the disappearance of a number of young boys; the police suspect a serial killer but have no clues. Then DeAnne gives birth to a boy, Zap (who suffers from cerebral palsy); more boys disappear from Steuben; and, frighteningly, their names coincide with those of Stevie's invisible playmates. Even more confusingly, the computer games that Stevie has become absorbed in seem to run without disks or software. Finally, at Christmas, the matters of Stevie, the lost boys, and the invasions of insects come together in a wrenching conclusion. Once again, Card writes superbly about children, and here he adds a persuasive and heartwarming picture of a loving couple working hard to solve their problems. Affecting, genuine, poignant, uplifting: a limpid, beautifully orchestrated new venture from an author already accomplished in other fields.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1992
ISBN: 0061091316
Page Count: 464
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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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