A debut thriller set in a Texas prison by a young British psychiatrist who has never been to Texas, or to a prison. Nevertheless, the book's description of life in Green River, a mythical maximum security prison, is frighteningly convincing. The plot, however, is action-movie simple. A once-idealistic warden causes a race riot to shake up the corrupt system. This happens to take place the day before Ray Klein, a marshal-arts-obsessed doctor who was set up on rape charges, is due out on parole. Worse yet, the love of his life, a tough-as-nails visiting forensic psychiatrist, is trapped in the AIDS ward, and Klein must find a way to save his damsel in distress, as well as his adopted patients, before they are killed by the bad guys—an all-star team of white psychopaths. Klein does this with the help of his colorful sidekicks, most of whom are equally innocent men unjustly forced into prison by the cruel world. These sidekicks are all cut from the best-supporting-actor mold: the simple-minded giant, the sensitive black boxer, the gruff but caring lifer. Just to show that he is no mere schlock writer, Willocks then mixes in some watered-down and bombastic Foucault-sounding pontification on good and evil, discipline and punishment, and death and dying. But don't worry—brutal violence is always just a page away. In Willocks's prison, everything comes down to the good versus the bad, literally black versus white, with the blacks being good and the whites bad. But forceful writing somehow pulls the plot along, and, despite all of its flaws, including the silly and improbable sex scenes, Green River Rising is a fierce read. Realize that you are ingesting gobs of junk artfully disguised as gourmet fare, then dive in and enjoy. (First serial to Granta; film rights to Alan J. Pakula/Warner Bros.)
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-13571-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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