From Columbia University urban studies professor Coleman, two groups of zany stories, one about the experiences of an amiable white middle-class screwup, the other about those of an industrious black homeless woman. Beverly hails from a straitlaced midwestern family that typifies the preWW II values of the region. After passing a chunk of his youth in the company of a dying, eccentric old woman (he and she look at stamps together), he decamps for Antioch College and all hell breaks loose as he slides headfirst into the tempestuous beat bohemia of the '50s. He becomes an avid drunk, discovers sex, takes up with a madcap theatrical company, marries and divorces Otto Preminger's daughter, reinvents Broadway p.r. via a series of outlandish publicity stunts, and ultimately turns his talents toward the civil rights movement. This last enthusiasm takes Beverly down south and into several harrowing encounters with rednecks, and even gets him a kiss on the mouth from an arrogant, inflammatory black attorney. Later, Beverly's wild times catch up with him: He becomes a bad drunk, repents through AA, and undergoes open-heart surgery. Throughout, though, he maintains his genial humor, a sort of Salinger-lite that seems typical of midcentury masculine bon vivant-ism gone awry. Less engaging and witty are the more socially conscious Marigold tales. Following Marigold's quick introduction into the book, this wise woman of the streets (``she was tall and fat and black and topped by a great smokey tangled head of hair'') saves a beloved watering hole from being destroyed by a toppling World Trade Center (the result of an earthquake and a hurricane) and runs for mayor of New York. A first collection of cheery, terse yarns that often exceed expectations—most especially in the first half. In any event, the laughs are always genuine, and the social history of New York over the past 50 years is dead-on.
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14549-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
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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