Nothing new, really (the secret kept by one generation from another may not satisfy wholly once it’s revealed), but well and...
British author of the extraordinary Mendel’s Dwarf (1998) returns with a much more ordinary tale of star-crossed love.
The Welsh Guy Matthewson is widely known as a climber by the time the considerably younger Diana Sheridan—on a walking tour with friends—meets the famous man, goes climbing alone with him, stays overnight in his hotel—and falls hopelessly in love, as he does with her. But there are problems. It’s 1940, Diana will soon be a nurse in London, and not only does Guy face the trials of being a conscientious objector (though he switches later), but he’s married—to a German wife who left him two years before and returned to Germany with their young daughter. Diana can’t believe he’ll ever be free to marry her, and so ends the affair (by letter) when she finds she’s pregnant—and never tells him that she aborted their own infant daughter before entering her loveless and short-lived marriage with a doctor. She doesn’t even tell him about it when they happen to meet once more, after the war—Guy by now married to the good-looking Meg, as sexually loose as Diana is contained—and have a last passionate night of true love. All of this is told in flashbacks from the 1960s and later, in a story about the intimate friendship between Diana’s son, Rob Dewar, and Meg’s son, Jamie Matthewson. The two will climb together—Jamie will go on later to achieve truly enormous international fame—until an accident takes Rob off the Alpine faces and puts him into the art gallery business. Years pass, then decades—and only with the deadly fall alluded to by the title will past mysteries finally be revealed.
Nothing new, really (the secret kept by one generation from another may not satisfy wholly once it’s revealed), but well and skillfully done: the landscapes are wonderful, the history sharp, the climbing scenes awesome.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-09780-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
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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