A wild vacation full of humor and adventure.
In Siafu’s humorous debut, Preston Percival Goldfarb, proctologist, and his high-maintenance wife, Ruth Winkleman Goldfarb, take an unexpected vacation.
Percy (Preston) and his wife (known as Winkie or Winkie Tinks) have been married for 35 years, with seemingly nothing in common. While Preston is a hardworking man with a toupee and a slight gut, Winkie is a society woman with a broad frame and a big personality. Winkie tends to run the marriage and their household in every aspect, from raising their children to their yearly vacations. She’s gotten used to an annual beach vacation, complete with drinks and relaxing spa visits, but this year Preston has something else in mind: an adventurous eco tour in an island setting, close to Mother Nature. Unwilling to take a trip without the luxuries she’s used to, Winkie refuses, but Percy makes the reservation before she can stop him, not realizing that in his impatience he booked something a little different. For four days, Percy and Winkie find themselves on an island on a clothing-optional retreat for gay men, living off the land and learning about survival. Plus, Winkie’s trunk has been left at home, leaving her with nothing to wear but the clothes she has on. While Percy spends the first day wringing his hands over his mistake, Winkie swings into action, rounding up the other guests to find clothes, drinks and food to re-create the kind of vacation she wanted. Through her machinations, Percy and Winkie get to know a few of the other guests, as well as visitors to the island who have rather different pursuits in mind. What follows is a madcap series of events culminating in revenge, accidental dismemberment and more than a hint of dark comedy. Percy and Winkie can be grating, especially in the beginning of the book, but readers who stick with the story are in for an amusing and exciting romp into the unknown as the story wanders into unexpected, and perhaps a bit disturbing, territory. Winkie’s willingness to make the best of her situation is especially amusing, and the absurdity of the story may take readers by surprise.
A wild vacation full of humor and adventure.Pub Date: April 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1480909236
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2014
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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