Hoffman conveys the stink of poverty and the shame it can cause, but not much else.
Scenes from a dirt-poor childhood in Depression-era Virginia.
In the bad old days, Wayland Garnett lived with his four siblings in a cabin in the woods, on the estate of the almighty Ballards. Now, 47 years later, the 63-year-old Wayland is a prosperous Florida businessman with a beautiful wife and daughter, all traces of the redneck expunged. On a business trip to Richmond, Wayland revisits the estate for the first time. A chapter about the past is preceded by a page set in the present; each chapter repeats the pattern. It’s an awkward device for this veteran Southern writer (Tidewater Blood, 1998, etc.), and in the end, there’s no payoff. Wayland has lied to wife Amy about his past, claiming to be the son of a tobacco planter, but he decides after his memory lane trip that telling her the truth might destroy their marriage. That truth is harsh: Wayland’s daddy manages by poaching from the Ballards (the family lives off Ballard castoffs), and making corn liquor; his momma goes barefoot; and Wayland clears ditches. Yet they have their white skin to remind them they are a cut above “the darkies,” an assumption bred in the bone. When his daddy loses his arm to a baler, he loses his self-respect and drowns himself. After Wayland finds his mother frozen to death in the outhouse, the family scatters. Wayland falls in love with the Ballard heiress, Diana. They’re both 16. Challenged by her brother Eugene, he decks the rich kid, then gives up (“poor whites don’t contend above their station”). It’s time to leave. The war has begun, and before you know it, Wayland has landed in Normandy. A muddled account of his years as an infantryman seems to have been added as filler. As for that journey home, all Wayland learns is that ancient truth: Death is the great leveler.
Hoffman conveys the stink of poverty and the shame it can cause, but not much else.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-57966-063-0
Page Count: 252
Publisher: River City Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
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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