The former journalist, following last year’s Echo House, returns to Vietnam, the subject of such earlier Just fiction as A Soldier of the Revolution (1970 ) and Stringer (1974). Just offers an ironic portrayal of American innocents undertaking “nation-building” in a land they don’t understand: Saigon and environs in1965, when US presence is comparatively new, and when nonmilitary “Llewellyn Group” operative Sydney Parade arrives buoyed by visions of fruitful solidarity with Vietnamese hearts and minds, unaware that he’s destined to become “a dangerous friend” to those who live “in country.” Prominent among the latter are French rubber-plantation owner Claude Armand and his American wife Dade, objects of interest to Sydney’s boss Dicky Rostok, an ego-driven bureaucrat who’s convinced the Armands somehow serve the Viet Cong in exchange for being left unmolested. The stage is thus set for multiple dramatic confrontations, though Just makes the novel predominantly a vehicle for static conversational variations on the theme of well-meaning US megalomania (“Reinvention is the opiate of Americans”). The result is a frustrating book: exquisitely written, charged with vivid images suggesting Vietnam’s mingled beauty and danger, yet idling along for much of its length (and occasionally slipping into reverse), soliciting our interest in its rather vapid protagonist (the narrator who introduces Parade to us disappears early on) by repeatedly underscoring his marital failure and ingenuous yearning to be a part of the life of his time. Just picks up the pace in the last 50 pages, when a diplomatic plot to rescue a captured American officer both succeeds and fails, perversely destroying much of what people like the Armands have painstakingly built; the meaning of all being encapsulated in another stunning image, that of the strong young American as a powerless “giant in the doll’s house.” In other words, America in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, Graham Greene already wrote this novel, The Quiet American, 40 years ago. Just’s flawed, redundant variation on it is, on balance, disappointing.
Pub Date: May 3, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-85698-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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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