A well-intentioned parable, full of big ideas but short on emotional intensity.
An exploration of reincarnation and spiritual growth, written by a mother and father who claim to be channeling their deceased son’s words.
After Ricardo K. Petrillo’s death in 2005, his parents came to believe that they could receive messages from him, via “automatic writing” through his father. Petrillo and Knoploch have since published five collections (Planet Janus, 2011, etc.) of such writing, and whether readers appreciate this sixth entry will largely depend on whether they’re onboard with the authors’ premise. This book comes with an additional source of confusion: Its fictional main characters are actually two different incarnations of one individual. Elderly Julius attempts to explore his past lives, and so we meet Daniel, a young spiritual seeker during the French Revolution. Through a series of political and personal travails, Daniel comes to understand the consequences of individual actions and emotions, and he strives to help those around him achieve a similar level of spiritual serenity. In one of the many authors’ comments sprinkled throughout the book, the reader is told: “Ah, if only men and women could understand how these emotions affect their lives….If they could open themselves to those that care and are just expecting an opportunity to help, they would change the world.” Sincere, didactic and deeply Christian, the narrative circles around and around these themes of eternal love and personal responsibility, and Daniel’s various dilemmas are likely to engage the spiritually curious. Daniel himself, however, remains frustratingly vague. He achieves a state of preternatural calm and detachment, but it’s never quite clear how he does so, and his near-angelic characterization makes it hard to relate his life to that of the everyday. The language can be distracting as well; it’s often florid, as when Daniel is introduced with these words: “Youth! What a marvelous time of life in which energy and vitality abound to support the thoughts of a mind thirsty for knowledge and ideals.” Hindered by trite phrasing and underdeveloped characters, the story ultimately lacks immediacy.
A well-intentioned parable, full of big ideas but short on emotional intensity.Pub Date: March 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1470071684
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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