Vol. II: “On the Sea” and Other Stories, 1883—84 $23.95, 300 pp. ISBN: 1-894485-02-5 Jan. 2000 The first two volumes of an ambitious gathering (and new translation) of all the Russian master’s early fiction—much of which appears here for the first time in English, having been deemed unworthy of preservation by Chekhov’s previous translators. Editor Sirin’s introduction pleads the case for resurrecting what are in many cases wan ’sketches” written for popular humor magazines, in the years when Chekhov (1860—1904) was starting his medical practice and assuming the burden of supporting his demanding family. Semifictional, possibly autobiographical vignettes (“Wedding American Style,” “My Anniversary”) and broad farces (“An Unhappy Visit”) dominate the first volume’s 32 inclusions. Nevertheless, several stand out: “He and She” skillfully lays bare the carefully managed hostility that binds a vain “European diva” to her smug husband; “For the Apples” offers an incisive satiric portrait of a malicious landowner, and “Two Scandals” efficiently delineates the vacillating relations of an inept soprano and the orchestra conductor who can neither tolerate nor forget her. Even the least substantial “stories” here uniformly display Chekhov’s matchless gift for swiftly establishing setting, character, and often even conflict and theme in a few brief sentences. But this mastery is more muted in the second volume’s 81 tales, many merely labored expansions of simple comic ideas gleaned, one infers, from both his professional and personal experiences and contemporary newspaper stories. Notable exceptions: “A Woman Without Prejudice,” who charms and surprises the lover bearing a “terrible secret”; “The Swedish Match,” a full-fledged detective story, and one of Chekhov’s most unusual works; “A Mysterious Woman,— which partially anticipates the justly famous “The Lady with the Dog”; and the radiantly absurd and moving “Death of a Civil Servant”—the first of Chekhov’s indisputable masterpieces. Sirin’s third volume, promised for late 2000, will contain more of the better-known and more fully developed stories of Chekhov’s tragically brief maturity. Still, even the juvenilia and ephemera of this writer constitute uniquely rewarding reading.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-894485-01-7
Page Count: 250
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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