A great subject, poorly treated. Surely Naslund can do better than this.
The earnest, accusatory latest from the versatile Alabama author (Ahab’s Wife, 1999, etc.), this time about the struggle for civil rights in Birmingham in the annus horribilis of 1963 and thereafter.
The bombing of a black church in which four young girls (the title’s presiding “spirits”) are killed and the ideal of nonviolent resistance preached by Martin Luther King provide the background for a busy melodrama in which a dozen or more prototypical black and white characters work out their individual and common destinies. The central figure is Stella Silver, orphaned since childhood and sympathetically attuned to the plight of second-class citizens—to the extent that she undertakes dangerous volunteer duty teaching at a school for black children. Stella is matched in nobility by her college friend, wheelchair-bound Catherine (“Cat”) Cartwright, and by angry black colleague Christine Taylor. As the summer in “Bombingham” heats up, and injustices and atrocities multiply, other major roles are filled by heroic Korean War vet TJ La Fayt (the object of particularly virulent racial violence); Christine’s sensitive and artistic prize pupil Gloria; KKK stalwart Ryder Jones and his abused wife Lee (whom Ryder tutors in bomb-making); and Stella’s second fiancé (after she’s dumped his insufficiently saintly predecessor), Cat’s brother Don (“He was like Alan Ladd crossed with Rock Hudson”—hmmm). In case you’re thinking the latter might have some redeeming human flaws, be advised that he’s also a Peace Corps volunteer. Reverends King and Ralph Abernathy make cameo appearances, and the voice of Sheriff “Bull” Connor is heard throughout the land. Things end with the requisite sacrifices and martyrdoms, and the death of a celestial black matriarch, who, like Faulkner’s Dilsey, has “endured.” As social protest, Four Spirits is commendably passionate and partisan; as fiction, it’s overexplicit, contrived, and stocked with posturing, lecturing cardboard characters.
A great subject, poorly treated. Surely Naslund can do better than this.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-621238-3
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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