This 1990 novel by the 1994 Nobel-winner fictionalizes publicly known facts about Oe's personal life: specifically, the story of his adult son Hikari, hopelessly brain-damaged yet possessed of a remarkable intuitive gift that has brought him fame and success as a composer of some highly original music. It's a curious book. The ordeals of the unnamed family at its center are described in a ``diary'' kept by their only daughter (and middle child) Ma-Chan, a student of literature who becomes her brother's keeper when their father, an eminent novelist identified as ``K,'' travels to America for a six-month residency at a California college. What begins as a strictly factual, almost clinical account of the details of caring for a grown man (``Eeyore,'' as Hikari is affectionately nicknamed) who's subject to epileptic fits, easily distracted, and only intermittently lucid, metastasizes, as it were, into a linked series of meditations on films seen (especially Andrei Tarkovsky's futuristic Stalker), books read (Blake's ``Prophetic Books,'' CÇline's Rigadoon), and disturbing experiences (a respected uncle's death from cancer, the apprehension of a neighborhood child-molester, strained relations with a muscular swimming coach who has been accused of sexual impropriety). These events appear, to the imaginative Ma-Chan, to have some significance in her ongoing struggle to accept her brother for what he is, and in her efforts to help make him a functioning part of society—imperatives that, in a courageous display of self-scrutiny, Oe clearly feels he himself has only imperfectly heeded. The novel is, on the whole, tediously discursive—and yet, as is always the case with Oe, the simplicity of his style and the bluntness with which his ideas are presented contrast intriguingly with the often hallucinatory intensity of his characters' emotions and perceptions. You know there's something substantial here, and you keep reading on. Imperfect work, then, but, still, a welcome building-block in the ungainly structure that is Oe's utterly distinctive and compelling oeuvre. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8021-1597-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
IN THE NEWS
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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