For all its ups and downs, well worth having for both its treasures from the past and the demonstration of how much vitality...
Truth in labeling alert: Though all 15 stories veteran anthologist Penzler has collected are by African-American writers, most wouldn’t count as noir.
Practically all the contents are reprints, some from long ago, but apart from Walter Mosley’s “Black Dog” few are likely to be familiar. Generally speaking, the vintage rediscoveries are the best. Although the stories by Pauline E. Hopkins and George S. Schuyler could have been left to rest in peace, Charles W. Chesnutt’s “The Sheriff’s Children” is unexpectedly touching in its portrait of past sins coming home to roost. Rudolph Fisher’s “John Archer’s Nose” spins deft complications out of a family-circle killing. Chester Himes’s “Strictly Business” captures a lost world of black pulp. Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s “Summer Session” turns white slavery into an easygoing anecdote. Ann Petry’s “On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon” is a mood piece of disturbing power. The contributions by relative newcomers tend to be more professional but less distinctive. Paula L. Woods, Robert Greer and Eleanor Taylor Bland present routine whodunits. The most interesting thing about Gary Phillips’s caper gone bad and Gar Anthony Haywood’s tale of jealousy and revenge between lifelong friends-turned-enemies is that they really are noir. The standout among the new kids on the block is Edward P. Jones’s “Old Boys, Old Girls,” which crams a lifetime’s worth of jailhouse disillusionment into 30 pages.
For all its ups and downs, well worth having for both its treasures from the past and the demonstration of how much vitality this neglected vein of crime fiction reveals.Pub Date: May 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60598-039-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
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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