The depth of the characters, the questions they ask and the challenge they confront stay with the reader long after the...
In one of the richer efforts by the veteran novelist, a compelling setup and stunning conclusion compensate for the thematic navel gazing through the middle.
Spencer returns to the scene of A Ship Made of Paper (2003), a novel that elicited some of his best reviews, bringing back writer Kate Ellis, her daughter, Ruby, and their hometown of Leyden, N.Y. Yet this novel isn’t exactly a sequel and can be read independently of the earlier work. Its protagonist is Paul Phillips, a master craftsman who refuses to compromise either his carpentry or his principles. He has become Kate’s lover and a surrogate father to Ruby after doing some work at their house. The divorced Kate, previously a newspaper reporter, is now the bestselling author of Prays Well with Others, an inspirational account of her recovering alcoholism and embrace of faith. With hints of Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott in “her kind of Christianity, one that includes a fair amount of swearing and swagger, left-of-center politics, and all the sex your average heathen would enjoy,” she has come to believe that her life has a plan, purpose and meaning, and that the love she shares with Paul is an essential part of that divine will. A Dostoyevskian complication drives the plot, as chance (or is it fate?) leads Paul to tragedy—an encounter with a stranger in the woods, a man beating his dog, that will change the lives of all concerned and upset the delicate balance that Kate and Paul have come to believe is their destiny. Ultimately, the novel’s title could refer as much to Paul, who must come to terms with the man he has become, after he did what he never believed he could. What seems to some like “a universe in which the pieces fit together beautifully” just might be “a universe where nothing is guaranteed and nothing can stop bad things from happening.”
The depth of the characters, the questions they ask and the challenge they confront stay with the reader long after the conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-146655-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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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