Dark, brilliant and disturbing. Let’s hope this first U.S. publication for Chilean novelist Franz will be followed by many...
What happened in a provincial town during the early days of the Pinochet regime.
Twenty years after the coup that toppled Salvador Allende’s government, Laura Larco returns to Pampa Hundida. A young judge there in 1973 when the soldiers rolled in, Laura fled abroad a few months later. Now she has come home to resume her judicial post, carrying in her briefcase a manuscript written in response to her daughter Claudia’s angry question, “Where were you, Mamá, when all those horrible things were taking place in your city?” Born in Berlin, Claudia has come to Chile “to serve justice” and make sure wrongdoers are punished in the restored democracy. But guilt and innocence are not easily defined, we see as Franz interweaves the events that unfold following Laura’s return with her memories of the town’s ordeal in 1973. The brutal Major Cáceres relied on the terrified complicity of Pampa Hundida’s authorities as he executed political prisoners in a camp on the outskirts of town, and he established an unnerving bond with Laura, fearfully attracted to him from the moment she stormed into the church where he was praying to denounce his violations of the law. Past and present narratives build to a joint climax, as Laura learns of the terrible intimacy between a torturer and his victim, as well as the willingness of ordinary people to benefit from evil deeds. Revelations of Cáceres’ crimes threaten to discredit the annual religious fiesta that by 1993 is the primary source of Pampa Hundida’s economic well-being. Wouldn’t it be better, the nervous mayor asks Laura, just to let old wounds heal? By contrast Cáceres, disfigured and half-insane, looks to her to judge him. The course of action she chooses is as unpredictable as everything else in Franz’s superbly plotted novel, which invokes the ancient gods of Chile’s indigenous people, as well as the eternal opposition between humanity’s Apollonian and Dionysian instincts, to remind us that all judgments are partial and compromised.
Dark, brilliant and disturbing. Let’s hope this first U.S. publication for Chilean novelist Franz will be followed by many more.Pub Date: June 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-929701-94-3
Page Count: 375
Publisher: McPherson & Company
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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
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.
