A unique, daring fantasy more interested in morality than the dazzle of other worlds.
A novel about a young man’s journey to a fantastic place, with real-world consequences for himself and his family.
With an almost chant-like cadence, Deepan renders the psychological tensions in the Patel household via the careful descriptions given by the father of 17-year-old Jake, descriptions that illuminate the many movements and evasive gestures that structure his relationship to his son. The emotional fire that fuels this father-son bond grows from a wife-mother dying of cancer, and from this metastasis spread many tendrils of grief, blame, desperation and resentment. It’s a strikingly contemporary and unorthodox prologue to a novel that the author eventually populates with sorcerers, witches, spells and mystical lands. It seems initially jarring, but this down-to-earth pathos and mature psychological detail gives the phantasmagoric portions of the book additional heft and material dimension. Jake’s father informs the reader directly that this is the story of his son and himself, and that, whatever follows, nothing will be the same for anyone involved. Jake takes the brunt of the drama as he finds his way, by aid of Ureth the witch, to Tiramonde, a fantastic land whose destiny is intertwined with his where he embarks on a quest to reverse his mother’s fate with the restorative fruit of the Dendragon Tree. Though parallel destinies and plucky chosen ones are standard fare for young-adult fantasy, the moral conundrums that compound on Jake’s shoulders set this novel apart. He searches for the fruit of the Dendragon Tree, but Jake must also contend with legends that foretell the release of an ancient, destructive dragon should he dare pluck the tree’s fruit—is his mother’s life worth that of an entire world? Eventually Jake’s father journeys to Tiramonde to retrieve his son, but that only increases the moral murkiness of Jake’s decisions. Deepan’s prose is elegant and clear, even when Jake’s proper course of action is not, and readers will get caught up in the struggles of characters with such depth and heart. If this fantasy novel were only about a troubled kingdom in need of its lost crystal, or some other well-worn trope, it would probably still have been entertaining. But the work deftly allegorizes the hero’s journey into a story about family, death and forgiveness, setting it apart as a genuine curiosity and affirming read for fantasy fans.
A unique, daring fantasy more interested in morality than the dazzle of other worlds.Pub Date: May 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-1432756703
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Outskirts
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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