This tale will give readers some laughs on a summer afternoon, which is all one asks of it.
Surely this is the only novel, comic or otherwise, starring an agrostologist, and this one escapes what seems to be a very long bad dream with his pride, if little else.
This story’s protagonist and narrator, a likable schlub named Joe (called “Slim” for most of the novel), is a grass botanist, or “grassman.” He comes under the sway of Bill Borrington, a man who exemplifies that hackneyed phrase, “a force of nature.” Bill always has some mad scheme going, and this one involves growing one’s own putting green. Joe knows that the project is doomed from the start, like Bill’s plan to breed prize beef cattle from one bull that’s literally on its last legs, but he’s also broke and desperate. Readers then meet a cast of characters that includes two sycophantic lawyers that never leave Bill’s side; the exotic, ravishing Autumn Bliss (with whom Joe unsurprisingly falls in love), the evil Zomboni sisters, and others. Bill is demanding, but also a bit of a flake; Joe has to recruit his own workforce from local winos, as the crew that Bill got from the women’s prison didn’t work out. He does manage to build a pond, dam, and irrigation system on Muddy Brook, which meanders through the property, but that doesn’t work out either. Meanwhile, the Zomboni sisters have put a curse on all of Bill’s endeavors, so that just the thought of them reduces him to a quivering wreck. Young (Hail, Cigaros!, 2016) is genuinely witty and seems to be enjoying himself as he keeps the plot stirred. He’s not on the level of, say, Peter De Vries, but readers will await more comic novels from him. The basic joke in this story is Joe’s insecurity and his relentless anxiety about being found out; he is a bona fide agrostologist, but he also knows he’s taken on an impossible task. On the other hand, he does have his resourceful moments, and there’s never a time when readers aren’t rooting for him. He finally escapes the wreckage of Muddy Brook Farm, counting himself lucky, and readers will count themselves satisfied.
This tale will give readers some laughs on a summer afternoon, which is all one asks of it.Pub Date: June 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-312-78030-9
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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