Israel recalls Carl Hiaasen and Christopher Buckley in their liberal bents and sense of the perniciously absurd. Will he be...
A former U.S. congressman takes on the gun industry and a big slab of American politics in this entertaining satire.
Israel (The Global War on Morris, 2014) served in the House of Representatives from 2001 to 2017 with a constituency on Long Island, New York, where part of his second novel takes place. When gun violence threatens the share price of Cogsworth International Arms, chairman and CEO Otis Cogsworth calls in lobbyist Sunny McCarthy to launch a bill requiring every U.S. citizen to carry a gun. The American Freedom from Fear Act allows Israel to reveal not only the grotesquerie in the legislative process, but the frightening ease with which such a measure can get passed, given enough money, political IOU’s, and complicit media. The story toggles between the national circus in Washington and the local politics of the fictional village of Asabogue, tucked among the beach towns of eastern Long Island. Mayor Lois Liebowitz copes with broken streetlights and the occasional demands from the village’s wealthy enclave of Billionaires Bluff, where Cogsworth lives. When she seeks to ban guns in Asabogue, Cogsworth and neighbor Jack Steele, an aging action-film star, cook up an effort to oust her in a recall vote, with the actor running for mayor. A subplot involves a local militant wacko who believes in an “Islamex plot” by which Muslims use the Mexican border to invade the U.S. Israel teases out personal ties between Lois and Sunny—two strong women characters in a largely male cast—and how they may figure in an electoral battle pitting million-dollar budgets and National Rifle Association muscle against a kitchen-table campaign that starts with little more than handmade lawn signs.
Israel recalls Carl Hiaasen and Christopher Buckley in their liberal bents and sense of the perniciously absurd. Will he be gunning for No. 45 in his No. 3?Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1802-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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