An imperfect flight of war-era fancy that still manages to stick the landing.
A young pilot finds a way to serve her country and secure her own freedom in McLaren (Song of Time, 1996, etc.) and debut author Garcia’s historical novel.
As the Allies in World War II begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the war in the sky takes center stage. Both German and Allied troops are racing to build a faster fighter jet that’s capable of clearing the way for their invading armies. In America, this results in Operation Archangel, a top-secret plan to corner the market on chromium—a metal needed to build supersonic jets—by any means necessary. Wallace Doyle, the son of the U.S. ambassador to Ireland, gets recruited by the Nazis to spy on the American operation. Meanwhile, Sprite Shannon, a young woman from rural Georgia, also gets caught up in the international game of espionage after her father’s death forces her to find a way to support herself with her piloting skills. She joins the Women’s Army Service Pilots, or W.A.S.P., and begins her training to become one of the first female military pilots in U.S. history. Along the way, she makes a mortal enemy of Doyle and unwittingly becomes involved in Operation Archangel—all while competing for status in her organization and falling in love with a shellshocked Air Force pilot. Although this book takes substantial liberties with World War II history, it weaves an exciting story around its central characters, whose lives constantly overlap in unexpected ways. Sprite is a likable protagonist who constantly beats the odds through determination and charm, and several other players are also well-drawn. The dialogue tends to be unfortunately on the nose, though, as in Sprite’s speech: “Seems like I’m different from the person I was even two weeks ago. I’ve always had responsibilities with keeping our house and helping Daddy in the business, and school, of course—but this feels so different. This is…what my father called my ‘destiny.’ ” However, it doesn’t usually slow the story down.
An imperfect flight of war-era fancy that still manages to stick the landing.Pub Date: June 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9975689-0-5
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Saphirion Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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