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THE FADING COLOURS

Name: THE FADING COLOURS
Author: René Chalem
ISBN: 978-1503257801

by René Chalem ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 2014

A fine first novel from a writer with affecting wisdom.

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Chalem, in his debut novella, looks at the role and limitations of art.

Elie Melach is a well-known, Egyptian-born Parisian artist who’s drifting quickly toward old age. He’s most famous for his black-and-purple painting The Children of Rwanda. The work was well-reviewed and sold for a healthy sum, but Melach feels somehow disgusted with his celebrated masterpiece. He now finds it difficult to produce anything, and he sets aside his canvases, still blank, thinking that they can’t be improved by his brush strokes. One day, he goes early to lunch and uncharacteristically orders a whiskey. Perhaps he’s just in a bad mood, but a creeping doubt settles over his mind, blocking out the myriad colors that make up his painter’s alphabet, and causing him to imagine only black. The conflicts of the world weigh heavily on him: Does any of his work matter, as he wallows in cafes while innocents die in a dozen wars around the globe? The newest turmoil is in Lebanon, where his fellow Jews are abetting massacres in Sabra and Shatila; he wonders: What is his part in that, his proper response? Must every artist chose between significance and happiness, or is the very notion of a choice the delusion of the creative mind? He tries to decide whether he is highly moral, tragically empathetic or just depressed. Family members, friends, employees and strangers wander in and out of Melach’s day, informing and reorienting his positions as either a witness or an active participant in life. Throughout the novel, the main character drifts about in a fine existential crisis, but it’s one that’s never boring. Chalem handles Melach with humor, compassion and openness that evokes the work of such authors as John Banville, Percival Everett and the late Alberto Moravia. His prose is a perfect mirror of his protagonist: unrushed, observant, musing, and belonging to a slightly earlier time. It pulls readers through its pages like a balloon on a string, leaving them buoyantly unaware of whatever inevitability awaits. This is a short book, but one that achieves grandeur through its smallness: The novella is the perfect medium for the story, and it makes a fine addition to the current renaissance of the format. Although this is Chalem’s debut publication, he’s a mature talent, and readers should take notice.

A fine first novel from a writer with affecting wisdom.

Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014

ISBN: 978-1503257801

Page Count: 168

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

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.