An uneven historical novel, but its action scenes make it worthwhile.
The handsome, resourceful Hawaiian John Tana is back in this second volume of Fernandez’s (John Tana, 2017, etc.) trilogy, set in 19th-century Hawaii.
This time around, John has fled the corruption and dangers of Honolulu and gone back to his home island, Kauai. He’s lost his great love, Leinani, but he eventually marries a good woman, Mahealani. But the evil, powerful sugar baron Robert Grant is still his sworn enemy, and Hawaii is at a political tipping point: Will Grant and his cronies manage to get the United States to annex the islands, and is this the beginning of the end for the Kingdom of Hawaii? These difficulties are complicated further by existing racial tensions between the Anglos, the native Hawaiians, and the Chinese. Also, John has converted to Christianity, but Mahealani and others still follow the old religion, gods, and superstitions, and this issue becomes a festering wound on the marriage. John tries many jobs, including working as a rice-field guard, the chief of security at a sugar plantation, and an occasional bodyguard for Hawaiian King Kal?kuau. As a Hawaiian, he wants the respect that he feels he deserves, and by the end of the book, he gets it and begins to prosper, laying the groundwork for a third volume. Fernandez’s description of a raid on a counterfeiting operation, the tracking and slaying of a wild boar, and other bits of derring-do are well-done. He also introduces readers to Hawaiian history and culture, including the mysteries and terrors of the aforementioned “old religion.” There’s even a cameo appearance by the real-life Father Damien De Veuster, who was famous for his work with lepers. All these things help to pull readers into the story. On the other hand, the villainous character of Grant veers steadily toward Snidely Whiplash–style caricature, and the backstory of a character named Joe Still is mystifying. Illustrations include rather fuzzy black-and-white photos of the Hawaiian countryside as well as sketches by Judith Fernandez that lend an effectively primitive charm to the story and bring to mind Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's sketches for The Little Prince.
An uneven historical novel, but its action scenes make it worthwhile.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9990326-5-7
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Makani Kai Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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