Kallos has a rare, deft way with whimsy, dream sequences and hallucinations. Comparisons to John Irving and Tennessee...
Theater veteran Kallos debuts with a dazzling mosaic of intersecting lives and fates.
Lured by an unsigned postcard, possibly from her ex-lover, freewheeling Wanda Schultz travels cross-country to Seattle. A stage manager, she’s in demand anywhere there’s a show looking for a fiercely organized, sturdy person. Her quest parallels her long lost father’s: in 1969, he left six-year-old Wanda with his sister’s large family to set off in search of his runaway wife. Elsewhere in Seattle, septuagenarian Margaret Hughes has been diagnosed with a brain “astrocytoma”—a “star” tumor. She has occupied a cavernous hilltop mansion since childhood, when her wealthy father’s hobby was dealing antiques and her mother’s was genteel insanity. By 1946, her mother was the châtelaine and “sacristan” of vast rooms of fine china and porcelain that her father fenced from Nazis, who stole from the apartments of deported Jews. Except for a brief marriage that ended after her young son was killed in a car crash, Margaret has lived in seclusion all these years, dusting tchotchkes her sole preoccupation. Determined to change her habits after the diagnosis, she advertises for a boarder. Enter Wanda. Both women, shattered by abandonment and loss, reform themselves by methodically destroying the artifacts looted from others’ lives. The smashing and cracking symbolism might be too pervasive for those who hate to see the lovable Wanda broken in service to a motif. But it’s a very skillfully integrated conceit. After Wanda recovers from multiple fractures (she’s hit by a car while running after her chimera of abandoning males), she becomes a renowned mosaic artist, creating giant installations from “pique-assiette” chards of the Hughes collection. A subplot involving bowling, the lost father, and a Holocaust survivor who has a missing piece from Margaret’s hoard rounds out this multilayered rhapsody.
Kallos has a rare, deft way with whimsy, dream sequences and hallucinations. Comparisons to John Irving and Tennessee Williams would not be amiss in this show-stopping debut.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8021-1779-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
