Well-meaning soap, riddled with clichés.
A veteran paperback author returns with another earnest romance (I Know Who Tomorrow Holds, not reviewed; co-contributor, Winter Nights, 1998).
Kristen Wakefield is looking for love but not finding it, just like so many other well-educated, well-dressed, well-heeled black women in New Orleans. But she does have a fascinating career as a museum curator and a personal wardrobe that includes every expensive label known to womankind. The crystal chandeliers gleam and all the upholstery is silk in the circles she moves in, every step muffled by thick carpets, every object in sight indicating bogus sophistication (“You’ve been to Paris, of course,” says Maurice, her friend Claudette’s creepy husband, proffering a glass of Dom Perignon. “Several times,” Kristen replies, wishing he would stop touching her). If only Claudette would return and keep Maurice in line, they could get back to talking about the fabulous collection of contemporary African-American art that Kristen wants to borrow for a show at the Haywood Museum. Oh, no! Breathing heavily, Maurice comes closer . . .and closer still. It’s time to call for help. Enter our hero: brawny Rafe Crawford, who shoulders his way into the scene and punches the troublesome lecher in the nose. Rafe is a Real Man, a self-taught furniture maker determined to escape his family history of violence and abuse. But the villainous Maurice is furious that his evil designs on Kristen’s virtue have been thwarted—and later claims that she tried to seduce him and then persuaded her brutish friend to attack. Claudette will never lend the artwork now, Kristen knows—and what will her beloved mother and distinguished stepfather think? Bravely, she soldiers on, though her false friends have become her open enemies. Forced to resign, she finds that no other museum or arts organization will hire her. And how can she dare to have feelings for Rafe, when her love for him only brings him pain?
Well-meaning soap, riddled with clichés.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30734-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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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