The documentary muse of northern California's artistic upper-middle-class (Second Chances, 1988, etc.) toys with but never tackles the dangerous, fashionable issue of incest. The story—such as it is—goes like this: Caroline, a handsome affluent woman in her 60s, is returning to San Francisco with her third husband, Ralph, after a five-year sojourn in Portugal, taken so that Caroline could separate herself from the dramas of her five grown daughters: Sage, a pale, stooped potter of 40, who five years ago was having a disastrous affair with an older local pol named Roland Gallo and who since has married a flirt (and worse) named Noel; Fiona, petite, blond, and chic, proud owner of a trendy S.F. restaurant named after herself, who now is having her own affair with Roland Gallo; Jill, slightly younger facsimile of Fiona, an investment banker and part-time call-girl who is carrying on an affair with (yes) Noel; Liza, married, with three children, and worrisome only because she seems so contented; and young Portia, only daughter of Caroline and Ralph, who's been drifting until she discovers she's a lesbian. Well, Ralph dies of a heart attack: Sage attempts to seduce her stepfather, Caroline's second husband Jim McAndrew, and, when she fails, divorces Noel and becomes rich and famous from her pottery; Fiona's restaurant goes under, and Fiona is jilted by Gallo, who (it turns out) has always really lusted after Caroline; Jill is caught in a call-girl sting and later suffers injuries in a car accident with Noel; Liza publishes a short story; Portia inherits a house and takes a woman lover; and Caroline flees to Italy, with Roland Gallo in hot pursuit. In case all this leads you to imagine that Adams's latest has a plot—it doesn't. But it does have lots of food and wine, plenty of architecture, and constant emotional innuendo delivered in the author's patented mannered prose.
Pub Date: March 22, 1991
ISBN: 0671028480
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1991
PERSPECTIVES
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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