HERMES IN PARIS

Name: HERMES IN PARIS
Author: Peter Vansittart
ISBN: 0-7206-1106-7

by Peter Vansittart ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2001

Vansittart’s alluring gem is an exhilaration, a sigh, a prose poem that resembles a standard novel only in length. Lacking...

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A delectable work of lyric fiction offers an aural snapshot of Paris in the time of Napoleon III, glimpsed through the eternally wandering eyes of mythic trickster Hermes.

While giving short shrift to proper plot, Vansittart (A Safe Conduct, 1996, etc.) inscribes language on these pages with the lush attentiveness of an adoring craftsman. Hermes is a night creature, “favouring darkened pavements, thieves’ kitchens, backwater taverns at crossroads or in the remains of woodlands”; with amused detachment, he watches “the constant procession, cheerful, purposeless, stung into fresh being by the New Year promise.” Properly, Hermes in Paris is a historical, its story strung through the unstable, socially and culturally tumultuous mid-ninth century. Yet the period is less a backdrop to the action than a player in the lives of Vansittart’s characters, though they believe themselves both exempt from, and superior to, their time. The young journalist Charles-Luc de Massonier, pen name “Tacitus,” finds the mediocrity of his cultural hour offensive to his own clear genius; he fusses and fulminates and is ultimately brought low in a duel by powers much greater than his own. Hermes accompanies Etienne and his ten-year-old son, Emile, as they wander through their jobs, amusements, and afternoon fields of grass. As is usual with atmospheric language, the prose here is highly impressionistic, and Hermes’ voice caresses details as if seizing upon any permanency he can find: wine glasses, dinnerware, butler’s vests, and soldier’s breastplates exist as the vivid auras within which these deluded, vague, but touching human souls thrive. The substantial introduction strives but fails to locate the novel in any meaningful historical context.

Vansittart’s alluring gem is an exhilaration, a sigh, a prose poem that resembles a standard novel only in length. Lacking the poised densities of plot and character to ground it, it’s caviar for the happy few.

Pub Date: April 12, 2001

ISBN: 0-7206-1106-7

Page Count: 234

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.