A retelling of a well-known mystery that offers a few twists on the original.
A tour guide on the verge of retirement undergoes a haunting experience in this ghostly novel.
Raymond Smollet is giving his last tour of the Weatherlee Ghost House. He’s spent 30 years guiding visitors through the rambling home. Despite having lost his vision, he can still navigate the winding hallways and recite the rote stories. Smollet’s life is small and depressed; he lives alone with his cat and anticipates drinking himself to death after retirement. But his last tour of the Ghost House is an unexpected experience, as the blind man suddenly sees spirits everywhere. Sophia Weatherlee, the unbalanced heiress who insists on endless construction in the sprawling labyrinth of her home, appears in ballrooms and bedrooms. Her foreman, Chuck Ratowitz, struggles to respond to her unpredictable and constant demands while his personal life is falling apart. Smollet sees the house grow, witnesses a family dissolve, observes building disasters, and watches various servants and workers pass in and out of Sophia’s realm. It’s a horror story and a tragedy, with elements of romance and fantasy mixed in. This novel by Bishop and Fuller (co-authors: Galahad’s Fool, 2018, etc.) draws heavily from the chronicles of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, but employs different names and adds some backstory. Many of the details about the mansion, like removable floor panels, and the family, such as the death of Sophia’s daughter from marasmus, are pulled directly from the Winchester story. Smollet is whiny and condescending, an unlikable man who tends to expostulate too long on his sorry existence. His part of the tale feels unnecessary, as it’s the house, with its ghostly inhabitants, that is the true focus. The narrative surrounding Chuck and his wife and the subsequent unraveling of their lives is well written and engaging. Though the Winchester House did have a foreman who worked on the construction for 38 years, Chuck’s personal life and backstory are pleasant and unique contributions by the authors.
A retelling of a well-known mystery that offers a few twists on the original.Pub Date: June 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9997287-2-7
Page Count: 226
Publisher: WordWorkers Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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