An emotionally affecting and historically edifying tale.
In this historical novel set in the 19th century, a young woman of uncommon musical talent longs for the freedom that’s typically reserved for men.
A year after her mother died, Emily Alden, a precocious 13-year-old, is sent from her native England to New York City and entrusted to the care of the de Koningh family as her perpetually busy father, Lord Alden, attends to his own affairs. She’s achingly lonely but quickly makes friends with Corey de Koningh, a tenderhearted boy who’s one year her junior. The two bond over a shared passion for music—he’s a nimble-fingered pianist, and she wants to learn the violin but is forbidden to do so by her father, who thinks it unbecoming for a girl. Nevertheless, Robert Haussmann, Corey’s music instructor, takes her under his wing and tutors her. They discover that she’s unusually gifted and could go far, if she was only given the opportunity. Years later, while wasting away at an oppressive finishing school, Emily is reunited with both Corey and Robert—the former is still playing piano and composing music, although his father, Klaas, seems to encourage neither. Stark (Twilight Perspectives, 2016) artfully chronicles the intersecting lives of the three musicians, which are complicated by the attraction that both men harbor for Emily. The author masterfully sets the historical stage—the United States as it devolves into the Civil War—and she addresses the issue of slavery with nuance and rigor. Klaas secretly works for the Underground Railroad, and both Corey and Emily end up joining the cause, as well, in a riveting storyline. Emily is a delightfully complex mix of defiance and prudence, as she learns early in life that “there’s a very narrow line to negotiate between freedom and responsibility for women” in her era. Stark’s prose is reliably lucid and consistently faithful to the setting, although it’s sometimes a touch saccharine: “ ‘Why can’t we let each other alone?’ [Emily] whispered, shuddering. ‘The world might be a better place if it had only artists living in it.’ ”
An emotionally affecting and historically edifying tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9975239-3-5
Page Count: 385
Publisher: Momentum Ink Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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