Some of Townsend’s veddy British jokes don’t cross the Atlantic, but those that do are funny, frivolous, and devastatingly...
More satirical diaries of a persistently pathetic English everyman pitches brickbats and sourballs at Tony Blair, Princess Di worshippers, TV cooking shows, celibacy, and the ever increasing bunch of village idiots and ne’er-do-wells in Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Back in 1982, long before Bridget Jones turned feckless romance and menstrual cramps into bestselling silliness, playwright and comic novelist Townsend introduced The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged, 13 3/4. Over the years, the precocious adolescent who wrote bad poetry and made hilariously misinformed comments about his dysfunctional family, has grown—though not necessarily up. This sixth installment covers Adrian’s misadventures, with sarcastic side glances at national events, from March 1997 to May 1998, and opens with 31-year-old Adrian, author of an unpublished novel, employed as a chef at the Hoi Polloi, a fashionable Soho restaurant that serves such ineptly prepared “traditional” English fare as overcooked frozen liver and runny Yorkshire pudding (from the kitchen, Adrian glimpses Bridget Jones grimacing over dinner). His Nigerian wife Jo Jo has fled back to Africa while their three-year-old offspring, William, stays with Adrian’s father, George, who is chronically depressed because he can’t get it up anymore, and mother, Pauline, who is having an affair with Ivan Braithwaite, the father of Adrian’s first girlfriend, the voluptuous Dr. Pandora Braithwaite, who is also Adrian’s first and, so far, unrequited love. The diaries open with Adrian’s cautious surprise at Tony Blair’s election, for who should ride in on Blair’s coattails as the new MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch? Adrian contemplates celibacy, makes a short-lived TV cooking show called Offally Good!, Princess Di is killed in a car crash, Adrian’s father has an affair with Ivan Braithwaite’s wife, the Hoi Polloi is closed when foot fungus is found in a sink and, incredibly, Pandora and Adrian wind up in bed.
Some of Townsend’s veddy British jokes don’t cross the Atlantic, but those that do are funny, frivolous, and devastatingly dead-on.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56947-204-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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