This collection of short fiction by Dillard (English/Hollins College; The First Man on the Sun, 1983, etc.) runs the gamut from touching to tediously overwritten. The choppy title story contains four separate narratives: A tormented, suicidal punk rock singer's tale is portentous and overwrought, while that of a writer afflicted with a 10-year writing block is predictable; the most affecting segment concerns a prisoner who escapes from his cell only to find himself trapped in darkness, unsure whether his next step will lead to oblivion or freedom. The characters in Dillard's takeoffs of southern literature are more likable and less overwhelmed by symbolism. Abel Boyd, protagonist of ``The Road,'' returns to his childhood home after an absence of 38 years. The author movingly depicts Abel's confusion as he encounters a redneck bartender; his old childhood playmate, now a respected citizen of the black community; and an astute young prostitute with the proverbial heart of gold. ``That's What I Like (About the South)'' coyly reverses all the men's and women's names (a girl is named Roy, her boyfriend Shirley, etc.) to play upon the ``defining characteristics of southern fiction.'' Sentimental Roy has a typically eccentric southern family and sense of community, but Dillard writes about her with a comic, gentle touch as she loses Shirley to another girl—strangely enough, also named Shirley. ``The Bog'' purports to be the journal of an academic trying to achieve ``intercellular communication'' by using his powerfully directed thoughts to will insects (and sometimes humans) to fulfill his desires. The satire of academia is uneven here, especially in the portrayal of feminist author Sara Band, a hot number in a green pantsuit who sleeps with all her male colleagues. Still, there are some lovely lyrical passages about the professor's successful and unsuccessful interactions with nature. Best and most appealing when the author steers clear of overwriting his characters and laying on the parody too thick.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8071-1839-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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