In his second foray into fiction, MIT physics and writing teacher Lightman (Einstein's Dreams, 1993, etc.) integrates hard science into a commentary about chaos and order in human experience. Bennett Lang is born in Memphis to an elusive father, who buries himself in books, and a demanding mother, who wanted a daughter but bore three sons instead. Bennett's closest brush with intimacy comes from the family's black maid, Florida. But class and race prevent him from ever getting too close. To fill this emotional void and create a sense of order, Bennett turns to science at a young age. Lightman's descriptions of a young boy wondering why the sky turns red at sunset or why soap bubbles form nearly perfect spheres guide readers gently toward the more complex questions that haunt Bennett as he grows older. He loves sifting through the debris of the physical world and coming up with a ``single mathematical equation of inescapable solution.'' This compelling desire for absolute certainty drives him to pursue physics at a northeastern college where, as a graduate student, he determines the configuration of a mixture of light and heavy particles flying about in a sphere after they've achieved a balance. While he accepts that the problem is trivial, we're drawn into the poetry he finds in theory: When he writes down an equation and ``ten thousand stars would appear, careening through space...if he paused to eat tuna fish, the stars suddenly froze.'' When Bennett becomes a professor, he recognizes that he can only bury himself in calculations for so long. But his marriage to a self-deprecating artist, his effort to gather the discoveries of a reclusive and genius physicist, and his attempts to reconnect with his best friend from childhood all fail. An enchanting and resonating lesson that perfect order exists only on paper and another kind of perfection, ``fragile and flutelike,'' orders the everyday world.
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43614-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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