Good, clean entertainment, with plenty of period detail and a healthy dose of modern irony.
Garcia y Robertson’s latest historical (after Knight Errant, 2001, etc.), this set in 1460s England during the War of the Roses.
If you can’t tell the Yorkists from the Lancastrians, don’t worry: Lady Robyn of Pontefract has trouble keeping them straight, too, and she’s engaged to marry Edward IV. She’s not particularly dim or ill-informed, mind you; it’s just that she was born in the US about five hundred years after Edward died. Robyn dabbled in witchcraft in a New Age-y kind of way, you see, and got more than she bargained for when she accidentally cast a spell that took her back to 1461, with civil war raging about her. She adjusted to life without cars pretty well for a Californian, but she finds life without coffee difficult and will never get used to the clothes. She still has her Palm Pilot, however, and finds it useful for keeping a diary of the events taking place around her—which are dramatic indeed. Robyn has managed to ingratiate herself with Edward, Prince of Wales, thus gaining access to the highest levels of English politics during a time of great turmoil. The weak-minded Henry VI is tottering on the brink of insanity (he made Robyn a knight and bequeathed her vast tracts of land for no apparent reason when he met her for the first time), and intrigues have already sprung up to wrest the throne from him. Edward’s father Richard, Duke of York, is the leading contender and has a sizable army behind him. Robyn, who stands to become the Queen of England someday if Edward’s father succeeds, is excited by the possibilities but still wary of the whole enterprise, having seen already how short life expectancy is for heirs apparent in medieval England. If only she could get back to the prosaic, safe 21st century. . . .
Good, clean entertainment, with plenty of period detail and a healthy dose of modern irony.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-86995-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
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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