This dense, crowded, intricately constructed novel—a fictional history of the Caribbean underclass in the century-and-a- half since the abolition of slavery—won for Martinique's Chamoiseau the prestigious Goncourt Prize in 1993. The many-leveled story moves backward and forward in time, comprising the narrative of radical activist Marie-Sophie Laborieux, as improved and edited by the ``Haitian man of letters'' (one of her several mentors) Ti-Cirique, and presented by its ostensible author Oiseau de Cham—and these are not the only complications. Straightforward history (the rise and collapse of the plantation system, the coming of the oil companies, a formal state visit by de Gaulle in the '60s) is interwoven with fragments of Creole legend and folk wisdom, and, centrally, with the story of Marie-Sophie's itinerant father Esternone (including his many amours), and Marie-Sophie's own subsequent determination to emulate his love of liberty (he was a freed slave), climaxing with her establishment of a shantytown village to house the displaced Creoles of Martinique and with her battles in search of more humane treatment of her people. It's a colorful and exciting patchwork, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of its exotic locale and peopled by what seems an inexhaustible profusion of vividly eccentric figures, the most arresting including Esternone's beloved Ninon (who's carried away by a water siren), Marie-Sophie's lugubrious employer (and admirer) Monsieur Alcibiade, and the poet- politician AimÇ Cesaire, a real historical figure portrayed here as a complex mixture of socialist firebrand and crafty compromiser. Chamoiseau's high-energy prose brilliantly renders all the relevant permutations and particulars of class conflict and frequently produces such incidental delights as his wonderful description of one of Esternone's epical sexual encounters (``On the so-sweet crest of pleasure, he wished to scream sigh cry breathe die''). We're informed that another Chamoiseau title, Solibo Magnifique, is forthcoming in English translation. Godspeed.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-43235-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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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