This new version of Don Quixote is less an update of Cervantes than a comforting affirmation that our souls live on after we die.
It’s hard to write about this epic poem without mentioning its remarkable mode of composition. The poet who gets top billing is Ricardo K. Petrillo, but for all intents and purposes, the book’s author is his father, Claudio, as Ricardo passed away nearly a decade ago. According to the introduction, this volume is the seventh work that Ricardo has given to Claudio from beyond the grave. However, it’s less a story about a new knight errant than about why such transmissions are possible. The book’s hero is Joseph, an exceptional boy raised in New Mexico under the tutelage of a shaman. As Joseph grows up, he befriends Sancho, who will become his bosom companion, partner in crime and right-hand man. It takes no time at all for Joseph’s family and friends to recognize his intelligence, empathy, love, and desire for justice and peace. He takes these traits to medical school, where he learns that modern medicine neglects a crucial element: the human soul. Through study and meditation, Joseph comes to believe that our eternal souls exist apart from our bodies, and that we need to care for our spirits as well as our flesh. He takes this message into his medical practice and, later, into an unlikely political career. Author Martin Amis once remarked that Cervantes’ masterpiece’s only flaw is its unreadability. The same can’t be said of Petrillo’s update, which is thoroughly approachable and reads with admirable ease. Although it’s presented as poetry, it’s actually just prose dropped into unmetered quatrains, and at a few awkward moments, one wishes it would abandon the verse form and use simple sentences. For instance, when Joseph’s medical school professor advises him to “[s]tay without involvement / With the patients that come to you,” readers may wish that he’d just say, “Don’t get emotionally involved with your patients.” Also, aside from the sidekick Sancho, there isn’t much of Cervantes’ original to be found here. The Spanish hero’s famously mad windmill-tilting served to send up traditions of chivalric literature; by contrast, there’s nothing mad about Joseph at all: He’s the brilliant prophet of a new religion and a political savior. Overall, this work might have told Joseph’s story more effectively if it weren’t saddled with literary baggage.
An unexpected, poetic tale, in which the medium really is the message.
Pub Date: June 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494462642
Page Count: 326
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
