Some pretty good golf tips from Sal, but that’s about it to hold your attention.
Beard (Dear Zoe, 2005) very faintly echoes Updike at Updike’s weakest in a golf novel about a suburban Pittsburgh lawyer.
Michael, 45, and spunky, beautiful Kelly, 40, who met when she applied to be his secretary, are married and have two lovely daughters. When Michael announces that he wants to train for golf’s senior gold circuit, Kelly agrees to support his ambition if he can score under 70 two times. But then she announces she’s pregnant. Still traumatized by her pregnancy that ended in stillbirth, Michael shows no enthusiasm for having another child, leading Kelly to withdraw from him sexually. Michael’s pharmaceutical stock has taken a sharp turn upward, leading him to believe that he’s about to attain independent wealth. Sexually adrift, he begins frequenting “sexual therapy” center Healing Touch, deluding himself that what he’s offered there does not constitute infidelity. But when he develops a guilty conscience, he tells Kelly all about it, and surprise—she tosses him out. Around the same time, his stock plummets, and to make it all worse, he’s had to move back in with mother and father. He turns to golf, and as he plays under the tutelage of wise and loyal caddy Sal, he reminisces about his romantic and sexual history, trying to figure out where he went wrong and how to get back on track. Now on the golf course, Sal explains to Michael that he has the skill to win but must find the soul to play. As Michael readies for the game of his life, Sal arranges for Michael’s parents and Kelly to make an appearance. With earnest, chapter-introducing quotes from James Taylor, John Steinbeck, et al., the author clearly has sincere pretensions for his characters and story. But his intentions fall flat. There’s no doubt that Kelly is taking Michael back, and that the life he remembers is merely tepid. Time to move on.
Some pretty good golf tips from Sal, but that’s about it to hold your attention.Pub Date: May 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03759-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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