A fantastical and satisfying romp near the Rio Grande.
A debut graphic novel focuses on a zany family adventure in the American Southwest.
The Meyer brothers take readers to New Mexico in 1949. A mischievous boy named Carlos Lucero loves teasing a local elderly woman. But the woman is not just an average citizen: She is a curandera, or healer. Carlos sees her as an old witch, and he manages to snatch a cookie known as a bizcochito from her home. After Carlos takes a bite of the treat, he is swiftly turned into a calf. Amadeo, the victim’s older brother, and his friend Monree need to figure out how to turn Carlos back into a boy. The first idea is to go to Monree’s grandfather. The man is a shaman, but, unfortunately, he is currently out of town helping a grandson on a vision quest. To make matters worse, the boys realize that the curandera is following them, and she doesn’t seem happy. Her ability to change into different animals only frightens the duo more. The boys make their way back to the Lucero home, where more of the family becomes involved. But how will they manage to save Carlos and battle a woman skilled in magic? Even if it seems unlikely that Carlos will remain a calf forever, the journey to his redemption is full of twists, comedy, and sprinklings of Spanish. The authors provide a helpful glossary at the end that translates the Spanish words like “abuelo” (grandfather) and “cueva” (cave). And the tale’s humor, much like many of the earthy colors used by debut illustrator Hardy throughout the book, comes through strongly. For instance, a large talking rat named José with a fondness for beer, cheese, and dancing tends to steal all the scenes he appears in. In addition, whenever people become creatures, they retain something of their human looks (José has a mustache), and the results are cute and amusing. By contrast, more serious portions can languish. The curandera is given a backstory to explain her cruelness. She mourns a tragic event in her past yet her method of coping seems a little hard to believe even by quirky villain standards. Nevertheless, the narrative never drags and offers plenty of action. There are chases, monsters, and episodes of family bonding galore. There is even room in the end for some sentimentality.
A fantastical and satisfying romp near the Rio Grande.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73377-301-0
Page Count: 166
Publisher: North Fourth Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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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