To provide for his family in an America run by libertarianism, a man becomes a living organ farm for a large medical corporation.
In the not-too-distant future, the charismatic Enrico Prima and the Freedom First party have transformed America into a libertarian country where big corporations rule. In order to pay his son’s growing health care expenses in this uncaring society, Jonathan Newman is forced to take a lucrative but horrific job with the medical conglomerate QualLab. As their new “employee,” Jonathan is strapped to a table that will mine and sell his body for fluids and tissues over the next two years, all the while isolating him from his family. Rosell’s debut tosses the reader headfirst into the antiseptic world of Jonathan’s QualLab cell, with effective imagery recalling works like Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. Obviously political, the novel is respectably transparent with its leanings (take its slogan “and life is no tea party”), and even as a partisan cautionary tale the plot is never sacrificed for its message. The novel’s greatest strength is its world-building, hypothesizing the horrors of an unregulated free market and the nuance and gaudiness of such a system. In the spirit of good future histories, the book employs excellent foreshadowing, revealing the cracks in its world gradually, while organically introducing the reader not just to this new America, but also showing the ways in which the country was changed so dramatically. It falls short in places—the novel’s use of footnotes feels uninspired, as much of their information could have been fed naturally into the narrative and better served the story overall. Also the circumstances that allowed Enrico Prima to lead America into a libertarian dystopia are a little too vague, even with liberal suspension of disbelief. There are a few smaller problems—cliché villains and trite sexual situations, but this feels like nitpicking since Rosell’s novel is a consistently fun read with a strong message at its core. Occasionally shallow, but absolutely entertaining.
Pub Date: July 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461157458
Page Count: 325
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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