Hilarious first novel and sendup of the Mafia, by the author of Devil's Night (1990), Members of the Tribe (1988), etc. Foreign correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner William Gordon (real name ``Velvel'' Grossman to his Jewish family) comes home for a respite as a columnist on the Tribune, pursues his bisexual but largely lesbian movie-star girlfriend Jupiter Evans, and finds himself the main inheritor of his late uncle Max, a Jewish mobster whose ties to the Mafia go back 50 years. In fact, Uncle Max is second only to the Godfather himself, 77-year-old Don Luigi Spadafore, who sits home in Brooklyn and tries to speak as wisely as Don Corleone. When the will is read, Velvel's uncle has left him $500 million in businesses: ``fifteen percent of the action on the Brooklyn docks, a third of the union operation, the Colombian business, the lottery tickets....'' It's all there but it's not there—Don Luigi has assumed full ownership. However, Don Luigi's consigliere Carlo Sesti has had an inspired idea: to take Velvel into the family's more legitimate operations, on a $5 million retainer, plus one third of the future haul, if prizewinner Gordon will use his entree with the more crooked world leaders to expand the mob's territory on a global basis. Gordon feels burnt out as a columnist, thinks that endless wealth will help Jupiter resolve her bisexual problem, says yes. His older, closest friend, deputy city editor John Farrell, signs himself on as Velvel's consigliere for dealing with Carlo Sesti. Farrell is an irrepressibly outrageous drunk, the fount of the novel's bubbling fun, and his ``masterminding'' leads Velvel and himself into a full-scale war with Don Luigi's vast army of hoods. Freshness everywhere, especially when Velvel goes on Peter Jennings's evening news show to describe Don Luigi: ``This Luigi Spadafore is a ridiculous old man who sits around in a smoking jacket covered with spaghetti sauce and talks in parables that would embarrass a third grader.''
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-679-40263-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
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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