The heady first days of a relationship and the daily hardships of a life on the edge create narrative tension that builds...
Second novel from British author House (Bruiser, not reviewed): an intricate, tangled tale about two weeks of romance and violence in squatters’ London.
Ian is a new face in the London demimonde, squatting with two others in a house scheduled for renovation while working as a temp in a government benefits office. In the matter of a few days, his squatmate Malc is hospitalized after falling down stairs in suspicious circumstances, Ian quits his job (he doesn’t like being reprimanded for making mistakes), and police evict the squatters. Luckily, Ian can turn for financial support and a place to sleep to his older, more settled friend Gordon, who fancies him. Ian begins to realize that something sinister was going on at the squat involving Malc’s thuggish brother Terry, but although he finds some clues (a list of names, a bunch of pills), what exactly happened eludes him. He’s sidetracked by his new job as a bike messenger, which he enjoys for the mobility it provides as well as the strange new world it reveals. And he’s attracted to alluring South African/Irish Peter, a fellow messenger with a professional attitude who got Ian the gig after a chance encounter on the street. They begin a tender, tentative relationship just as Ian finally pieces together the reason for Malc’s “accident”: a benefits scam by Terry, whose accomplice was the now-jealous Gordon. In the marginal world Ian inhabits, this knowledge makes him a marked man.
The heady first days of a relationship and the daily hardships of a life on the edge create narrative tension that builds steadily but in unexpected ways: the result is a story memorable in its complexity and depth.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-85242-438-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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