Newcomer Kowalski pens an entertaining John Irving soufflÇ: a coming-of-age tale about a boy who becomes a novelist, having written a symbolic short story that he includes in a novel about a young boy coming of age. In August 1970, the baby William Mann is silently deposited on the porch of Grandpa Thomas Mann, Jr., the last patriarch of the once-wealthy founder family of Mannville, New York. Grandpa might have stepped on the child had not an F-4 fighter jet streamed overhead just in time—a pleasant Garpish touch. Like Garp’s father, William’s was a pilot, shot down a few months before in Vietnam. Grandpa Thomas raises the boy in a house full of ghosts and stories, including the one about the lost diary written by Civil War veteran Willie Mann. (Could it contain shameful secrets?) Across the way live the Simpsons, archenemies of the Manns, and their daughter Annie, with whom young Willie falls in love. A good Garp reproduction will feature an oracular woman who is scarred by sexual abuse, and Annie Simpson performs the role here, having been systematically raped by her father throughout her girlhood. She flees alone to Montreal, where she becomes—here, the proper Irvingite will, with Willie, sigh for the loss—a lesbian. But “maybe leaving her alone was the best thing. So I focused my energy anew on finding my mother.” With the encouragement of Dr. Connor, Willie’s authorial talent is nurtured, while all the loose strands in the story—the key to the Mann’s early fortune, the Simpson family curse, the identity of his mother, and the contents of Willie’s diary—come shudderingly together at nothing less than Grandpa’s funeral. Knock-off models are best enjoyed when the original is kept from view, and though its merrily familiar plot can make this somewhat difficult, Kowalski’s version will get you from A to B better than most. (First printing of $75,000)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-019355-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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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