These generic short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, and other magazines. Long (The Flood of '64, 1987) occasionally hits on an interesting idea, but he has a mild touch and never goes for the jugular, which results in a uniform softness. Marly Wilcox has an ``Attraction'' for Charlie Bitterman, and becomes entangled in a triangle with him and his racy high-school sweetheart, whose eye was gouged out by an older lover's daughter. There are some good observations about small towns and what it means to leave them or stay put, but the story peters out. In ``Perfection,'' a teenage girl plans to spend the night with her football-player boyfriend for the first time while her father is out of town, but her plans are complicated when she witnesses violence. Again, Long skirts the edges of meaning, retreating into a vague parallelism. Adult relationships are no more solid, and often end with banal twists, in the style of a slightly modernized O. Henry. In ``Talons,'' the narrator's aunt dies unexpectedly, and then he and his wife discover a cache of letters from an unknown man. When the narrator visits in order to inform the man of his aunt's death, he finds that the man is married and keeps a portrait of his aunt at home with the excuse that a customer left it at his frame shop and never picked it up. In ``Real Estate,'' Rosemary is renting a house from her boss, Gil, who also sleeps with her occasionally, although Rosemary tries to conceal their relationship from her teenage daughter. In the end, Gil's snotty girlfriend, a real estate agent, drops by to let Rosemary know that the house is on the market. There are plenty of recurring motifs here (surprise discoveries following death, hard-hearted daughters), but they add up to repetition rather than thematic depth. Fuzzy vignettes with few surprises.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80033-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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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