Glum and contrived.
Another mawkish family drama from the author of Jimmy’s Girl (2001), etc.
Again, an obligatory tearjerker plot: Claire Bishop, a consulting psychologist for the Connecticut Department of Social Services, who also runs a seafront inn with her husband Eli, a saintly veterinarian, accepts two last guests before closing for the season: a nervous father traveling alone with his blind daughter. Eli points out that something seems not quite right, but Claire doesn’t agree, willing herself to believe the man’s melodramatic tale. Nicholas Pierce, who calls himself an architect, says that his selfish, glamorous ex-wife insists on placing the pathetic little girl in an institution, and he intends to protect his only child from this grim fate as long as possible. Claire makes sympathetic murmurs—as her own beloved offspring have recently left for college, perhaps this little girl will cheer her up. And let’s not forget the subtext: Claire herself was abandoned by a selfish, glamorous woman who’d cherished hopes of a theatrical career—and who simply plopped little Claire into a playpen next to her pharmacist daddy and disappeared, never to be seen again. Is this early abandonment clouding Claire’s judgment now? You bet. (She seems blinder than the little girl she frets over, not even noticing that the child’s hair is dyed and ignoring her father’s odd behavior, like strolling on the beach with a briefcase he never lets go of, supposedly full of blueprints.) Then Kayla, who suffers from juvenile glaucoma, is suddenly in pain and begging for her eyedrops. Claire arranges to have the prescription delivered to the inn—and soon finds that her mysterious guests are gone, leaving behind only a bottle of hair dye dripping into the bathtub. Cops search rather lackadaisically through the next few chapters, hoping to reunite a bereft mother and her sightless child—but Claire’s emotional journey has only just begun. Will she ever find her own mother? And if so, how will she feel? Afterthought ending wraps it all up.
Glum and contrived.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-525-94735-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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