A thoughtful, if less than thrilling, novel about what society should be.
Harindranath tells the story of a hero’s quixotic quest to break with his society in this philosophical sci-fi debut.
In 2062, in the country of Utopai, everyone has a guaranteed monthly allowance, a happiness-inducing brain implant, and engrossing virtual reality games to play. Utopai appears to be, for lack of a better word, a utopia. Even so, 50-year-old bookworm Alonso is dissatisfied. He decides to pursue a path of hard work, risk-taking, fame-seeking, and wealth accumulation (things he’s only read about in books), so he rechristens himself “Don Alonso” and disconnects from the artificial-intelligence system that everyone uses. He recruits a reluctant sidekick, Sancho, and they set out to lead lives of self-sufficiency and meaning. They first attempt to invent something and build a business around it, but in Utopai, where AI has reached the level of human intelligence, everything seems to have already been invented, and private corporations no longer exist. Alonso’s strange behavior lands him and Sancho in a mental hospital, where they meet Carl, a fellow patient who explains to them how Utopai got to be the way it is. If Alonso’s dreams are structurally impossible in Utopai, then he seems to have only three choices: give up, escape, or reorganize society under a better model. Harindranath writes in an accessible, if slightly mannered, style. Much of the book is composed of dialogues in which the characters discuss the ideas that underlie the institutions of their world; “We lack meaning in our lives because we are far too dependent on our society, this humongous, unfeeling block of society,” Don Alonso says during one of his long conversations with Carl. “We feel powerless because our hands are tied, because the reality is hidden from us, because we really are powerless.” These intellectual discussions form the novel’s raison d’être, but they come at the expense of a compelling plot and significant character development. The author does address some murky issues of our time, such as many people’s reliance on technology. Still, the novel as a whole doesn’t feel particularly relevant to our present, far-from-utopic moment in history.
A thoughtful, if less than thrilling, novel about what society should be.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 158
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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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