Greg’s masterful first novel is charming, seductive, and sinister by turns.
An autobiographical novel about a young girl growing up in a small Polish village.
Greg (Finite Formulae and Theories of Chance, 2014, etc.) has published several volumes of poetry and been translated into at least five different languages. Her first book of prose, an autobiographical novel (or a fictionalized memoir), was received to great acclaim in the U.K. and was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. The book’s appearance in the U.S. is a great gift. The novel describes Greg’s childhood and early adolescence in a small Polish village in the 1970s and '80s. It is composed of short, vivid chapters that glisten and gleam, clicking one behind the other like pearls on a string. In one, Wiola (as she is called here) anticipates a visit from the pope to their village—really, he will just be driving through, but the village women eagerly prepare bunting to welcome him. Just as the bunting has been finished, however, a crowd of men arrives to destroy it: these are communist times, after all. Greg’s ability to describe moments of great historical, political, and cultural importance through the eyes of a child is wonderful. She remains focused on her young protagonist even as the Soviet Union splinters around her. Even better is Greg’s emphasis on bright, almost otherworldly images that crop up throughout these chapters. Wiola’s father practices taxidermy in his spare time; one day, after completing a project, he falls asleep on the sofa: “The goshawk, with its artificially spread wings, soared above him.” Later, her father dies, but before he does, Wiola notices “the shadow of a queen bee flicker[ing] in the window.” The images give the novel a fairy-tale quality, as does the threat of sexual violence, which echoes throughout several chapters.
Greg’s masterful first novel is charming, seductive, and sinister by turns.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945492-04-4
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Transit Books
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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