An absorbing drama with elaborate characters.
In Rolnick’s (Tattle Tales, 2016, etc.) series starter, a small group of people in Puerto Rico face potential danger after a sex worker is brutally beaten.
Monica, who runs a brothel, doesn’t know where to turn when her employee and friend Carmen is physically assaulted, because Carmen is an undocumented Costa Rican immigrant. Local businessman and coconut-farm owner Carlos suggests taking her to his wife, Rosie, a biologist and healer. Carlos and Rosie’s marriage is troubled; he’s absolutely devoted to his business, and she’s focused on helping those less fortunate, so they’ve gradually grown apart and now live separately. He suspects that Carmen’s attacker is Rosie’s close friend Jesus, who oversees the coconut farm. Jesus sent a secret, cryptic message to another healer, Abuelita, by homing pigeon, implying that a sinister plot was unfolding on the island. Abuelita, in turn, believes that it’s all tied to Carmen’s unknown past in Costa Rica. Meanwhile, two strangers on the island—investors for a condominium project involving Carlos—are making people wary, as well. Things escalate when a dead body is discovered and then subsequently disappears. Rolnick’s story is richly detailed, featuring characters with dense, intriguing backstories. American-born Rosie, for example, lost her Costa Rican father and American mother in a car accident on a mountain road that the local media wrote off as suicide. The author also makes Carlos exceedingly unlikable—a controlling man who disapproves of Rosie’s attire and even blames her for a miscarriage. Although the novel mainly concentrates on melodrama and politics—locals protest the U.S. military’s “bombing practice” on nearby Vieques Island—the understated mystery is solid. Rolnick’s assertive prose generates a slow, steady pace and even moments of poetry: “Teardrops of sadness were meant to be swallowed so that the oceans would fill with only happy tears.”
An absorbing drama with elaborate characters.Pub Date: July 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9845119-0-7
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Sedro Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
