Forced events and a lackluster cast undermine an otherwise entertaining first novel.
Sins of the father visit the son in paranoia, hubris, violence and corruption.
Walter Brimm, a deceitful investment executive, is convinced that his wife Gee, a sociology prof, is having an affair with ur-liberal Tod Marcum, publisher of Kerrytown Review, owner of a bohemian café, and wearer of leather moccasins. Gee, Walter feels, has been neglecting her duties of sex and childcare. Since she’s constantly working overtime with Tod on the latest social injustice, Walter daydreams about sloppy trysts and wives “placing more than a Chekhovian kiss upon the quivering sex” of other people’s husbands. He stews over news stories about scandal in love and business (to him inseparable) and reminisces over his own father’s imprisonment for fraud. Nostalgia works as a temporary buffer against immorality, though before long, his paranoia corrupts his judgement and he begins stealing Tod’s surefire ideas for real estate bids and marketing flexible watchbands. Walter confides in former client Jack Gorne, a tawdry, one-dimensional Execu-playa. After several Faustian deals, Walter ends up with a misappropriation of funds charge while attempting to bankrupt Tod. After losing it all, crashing a benefit and ending up in a hospital, he’s befriended by painter Myrian and her handicapped lover, Janus. Events fall into order too neatly as, it turns out, Walter’s new friends are also friends with Tod. In their presence, Walter grows determined to make reparations for his past sins but soon learns Tod and Gee have shacked up. Enter the paranoid’s timeless dilemma: Do ends justify means? Sequences and characters move in and out of believability as we learn of Janus’s own fraudulent past, for which a claims adjuster blackmails him in order to photograph Myrian nude. We’re treated to strained parallels between the present novel and masterworks, while the sheer volume of exclamations feels bizarrely Russian and the ending is rushed to an offstage gunfight, an innocent plea, and twin confessions.
Forced events and a lackluster cast undermine an otherwise entertaining first novel.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-9724295-0-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Brook Street Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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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