Temptations spiritual and mundane face the residents of a healing center as Howatch (Absolute Truths, 1995, etc.) visits the more controversial side of ecclesiastical life—the ministry of healing and exorcism—in a novel that splendidly mixes riveting story-telling with a moral quest. The protagonist is Nick Darrow, whose bumpy journey to the priesthood was chronicled in Mystical Paths (1992). Now in his 40s, Nick is the head of a popular London healing ministry, St. Benet's. There, with the help of another familiar Howatch character, Lewis Hall, he conducts healing services and counsels those in spiritual distress. Nick seems to have achieved an enviable balance between the spiritual and the corporeal life: The ministry is thriving, his work absorbs him during the week, and on the weekends he joins his beautiful and talented wife Rosalind at their Surrey farm. But evil lurks everywhere, and Nick's empowering sense of control is soon shattered. His troubles begin shortly after he asks Alice, a lonely overeater, to be St. Benet's resident cook. A ``woman of integrity'' in love with Nick since she first attended a service of his, Alice hides her feelings until the right moment. Though warned by mentor Lewis to remain humble in the presence of his gifts, and to be careful how he uses them, Nick, upset by Rosalind's unexpected request for a divorce, hypnotizes and rapes her. After he comes to understand what he has done, he collapses in grief and shame. But more challenges are ahead as a possessed volunteer in love with him threatens murder, and a young priest, whom Rosalind tried to seduce, commits suicide. Healing as well as love and redemption are at hand as a wiser Nick confesses to Alice that perhaps while ``wonder workers never fail . . . a priest acquires strength through weakness.'' Howatch again splendidly entertains and provokes as she describes a soul's harrowing journey through the dark places on the road to salvation.
Pub Date: Nov. 14, 1997
ISBN: 0-375-40102-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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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