An appealing young heroine discovers her own strengths in this seamless mix of fantasy, suspense, and real-life dilemmas.
A sixth grade girl’s strange works of art, her interest in mysteries, and a dangerous bully embroil her in turmoil and adventure.
Part mystery, part fantasy, and part journey of self-discovery, this middle-grade novel focuses on a 12-year-old girl with an unusual gift. Gracie Cooper, who was adopted as a baby, stopped making realistic art in the first grade after her classmates’ paintings were found torn to shreds. Only Gracie’s was spared, but at home, she wondered why the ferocious wild animals she had painted now appeared to be sound asleep. Her alarmed mother cryptically made Gracie promise to draw and paint “nothing that exists in the world” from then on. Except for one secret painting, Gracie sticks to abstract art even after her mother dies. But a new art teacher’s insistence on realism gets Gracie in trouble when fresh fruit in her painting turns brown and she is accused of deliberately altering her work. The news that her best friend and fellow mystery buff is moving away adds to Gracie’s woes, as does the class bully. He taunts one girl for speaking Spanish instead of English (the characters are not otherwise identified by race or ethnicity) and targets Gracie with verbal and physical abuse. Then Gracie finds one of her creations very much alive in her mother’s sketchbook. As Gracie and her creation interact, the novel deftly draws readers into a fantastical journey through the world of the heroine’s vivid imagination, culminating in her determination to overcome fear and self-doubt in a life that will never be ordinary again. Throughout this well-crafted tale, Ralph (The Peculiar Circumstances Surrounding the Disappearance of the Extraordinary Jimmy Pickles, 2015, etc.), a former teacher and the author of fiction for children and young adults, offers imaginative twists and emotional resonance. He shapes Gracie’s still-grieving father and other adults and her relationship with her peers with informed empathy. And the author’s revelation of the origin of Gracie and her talent is a genuinely moving surprise.
An appealing young heroine discovers her own strengths in this seamless mix of fantasy, suspense, and real-life dilemmas.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-07-900056-6
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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