A little like Jon Hassler’s engaging Minnesota fiction and Thomas Williams’s New Hampshire–Gothic Whipple’s Castle—and very...
The life of a small southern-central Maine town is memorably laid bare in Russo’s splendid fifth novel—every bit as reader-friendly and satisfying as its predecessors (Straight Man, 1997, etc.).
Not that Russo’s trademark wry humor isn’t everywhere present, especially in protagonist Miles Roby’s relations, friends, neighbors, and antagonists. Miles, generally considered “the nicest, saddest man in all of Empire Falls,” manages the Empire Grill for widowed plutocrat Francine Whiting (who may/may not bequeath it to him). He’s barely scraping by in an economically challenged community that was once the thriving site of the Whitings’ logging and textile mill “empire.” And he’s watching his teenaged daughter Christina (“Tick”) painstakingly mature, while also laboring to keep emotional distance from a host of brilliantly sketched seriocomic characters. These latter include Miles’s intemperate “soon-to-be-ex-wife” Janine and her aging fiancé, the annoyingly hearty “Silver Fox” Walt Comeau; Miles’s old high-school friend and enemy, hard-nosed cop Jimmy Minty; his one-armed brother (and reputed marijuana grower) David; and especially his widowed father Max, a senile delinquent who’s eternally on the make and cadging “loans” (mostly from Miles). Russo’s genius for loosely episodic storytelling hasn’t faded, but here it’s expertly yoked to several smartly paced parallel plots, whose origins and ramifications are spelled out in extended italicized flashbacks (as well as in a moving explanatory epilogue)—and focus in turn on the unhappy marriage and early death of Miles’s beautiful mother Grace, the slow-burning fuse that is Tick’s nerdy classmate John Voss (whose loneliness triggers the story’s heart-tugging climax), and the skeletons carefully hidden in the Whiting mansion’s many closets.
A little like Jon Hassler’s engaging Minnesota fiction and Thomas Williams’s New Hampshire–Gothic Whipple’s Castle—and very much the crowning achievement of Russo’s remarkable career.Pub Date: May 22, 2001
ISBN: 0-679-43247-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
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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