Strictly for fans—mostly under18—who can’t get enough of the Web site. Warning: Gushy, girlish prose throughout, with triple...
A twentysomething woman in New York . . . sound familiar? Not surprising.
Download Macromedia Flash Player 6 and you can check out Vivian Livingston on the Web at www.vivianlives.com. Tour her cute apartment, feed her cute dog, and rummage through her cute clutter. You can even click and flush her cartoon toilet or peek at her cool clothes! Vivian’s totally cool Web site gets more than six million hits a month and bristles with marketing links. Yes, Vivian has promotional deals with car companies, beauty products, trendy stores, girl magazines, and the greatest retail shrine of all, Bloomingdale’s. At least this pretend autobiography by Vivian’s amanuensis (and shameless shill) Sherrie Krantz doesn’t require that you provide your age, sex, and home address in order to read it. But we already know so much about Vivian: she went to Penn State, ended an abusive relationship with a frat hunk, moved to New York with her BFF (Best Friend Forever) after winning a songwriting contest, has a cool job as a glorified assistant at VH1, has straight and gay friends, can’t get her life together but has a lot of fun trying. Men: studly poet Patrick is great in bed but a cheater at heart, and tall handsome John, who’s like an investment banker or an attorney or something, is all wrapped up in himself. Work keeps Vivian busy, even if arrogant boss Zack won’t give her the promotion she deserves. Still, her next assignment is a plum: an all-star auto race in California. When she’s back in New York, a new romance blossoms with Jack, an Italian-American firefighter. Tragedy is averted when Vivian’s BFF’s stupid boyfriend accidentally sets fire to her apartment, but no one is hurt and the cute dog is rescued. Life goes on!!!
Strictly for fans—mostly under18—who can’t get enough of the Web site. Warning: Gushy, girlish prose throughout, with triple exclamation points, triple question marks, and emoticons.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45354-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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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