First published in 1956, this stirring, populous, large-hearted story about a rogue environmentalist is both a portrait of a...
Gary (1914-1980; The Kites, 2017, etc.), French Resistance aviator, war hero, and the only author to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt under two different names, overlays the plight of elephants and humans in this sprawling and ambitious novel set in post–WWII Africa.
The book begins as a story within a story, in a style reminiscent of Conrad, the details emerging gradually. A Jesuit priest arrives deep in the bush of French Equatorial Africa to question the colonial administrator there about events of the recent past. At the heart of the story is an idealist and former dentist named Morel, who petitions for the protection of the elephant herds. Dismissed as a crackpot and accused of misanthropy for caring more about elephants than people, he eventually abandons his petition and turns vigilante, shooting hunters and elephant trappers, burning ivory traders' buildings, ordering a trophy hunter flogged in public. His story catches the world's attention, stirring up sympathy for his cause and creating a public relations disaster for the local colonial government. Others join him: an elderly Danish naturalist and environmentalist; a young German woman orphaned in the siege of Berlin and raped by Russian soldiers; a dishonorably discharged, alcoholic American major; a charismatic Oulé tribesman with a French wife and education who wants to use Morel and his elephants in the struggle for African self-determination; a Jewish American news photographer who lost his family to the Nazis. As in The Kites, Gary is interested in the fate of idealism in a disillusioned, violent world, but this novel also compels us to consider the fate of nature in the face of human encroachment and greed. The horrors of WWII and the atomic bomb loom over the characters. Morel's identification with elephants began in a German concentration camp, where the idea of them roaming free on the plains of Africa kept him sane. Though his motives get twisted for political ends, he repeatedly rejects nationalism, insisting that the elephants are not symbols but living beings: "They breathe, they suffer, and they die, like you and me." The theme of suffering runs deeply through the novel. So does the loneliness of the human condition, which dogs each of these characters differently, including the British colonel with the pet jumping bean that is later buried with him. Gary shows a deep sympathy for his well-drawn, misfit characters as well as for the continent of Africa, shown here at a crossroads.
First published in 1956, this stirring, populous, large-hearted story about a rogue environmentalist is both a portrait of a vanished age and a timely reminder of the choices that still confront us.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-56792-626-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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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