An impressive family tale with a strong cast.
In this debut novel, a Colorado medical researcher must deal with a lab mystery, thorny secrets, and a boatload of personal conflicts.
Beth Armstrong, the story’s main character, has a lot on her plate and a lot slipping off it. Beth is a gifted researcher (currently working on a cure for multiple sclerosis) who discovers that some of her valuable mice have inexplicably died. Then there is the matter of files that disappear then reappear. Clearly someone is sabotaging her project and murdering the mice (although it is hard to convince her colleagues of this). At home, she copes with her aunt, the redoubtable Kathleen McPherson, who came to tend Beth’s mother in her final illness and now is in the busy researcher’s care. And there is Beth’s husband, Harold, a charming doofus who can’t stand his job as a CFO, preferring to start messy home renovation projects. Kathleen, a glamorous entertainer in her day (with a colorful history that includes speak-easies and mobsters in Chicago and Detroit), and Harold hit it off. Their Cuba Libre–fueled antics annoy Beth, who interrogates Harold about this alarming development (“So Kathleen’s bewitched you, has she?”). Soon Kathleen and Harold both become amateur sleuths. Early on, Beth’s beloved childhood home burns to the ground, and it sure looks like the fault of Kathleen, the doddering chain smoker, which further strains things. (To Beth’s amazement, her aunt firmly denies responsibility.) Eventually, the search for the lab saboteur and thief produces some extremely tense moments. The author can be forgiven a few loose ends—but most things are wrapped up nicely. And there is one real stunner at the conclusion. Dietz is a talented writer, delivering nuggets like “Beth dug a pleasant look out from somewhere,” and “She tossed her imagination in the wastebasket along with the card.” Readers will initially settle in for a standard mystery (who killed the mice?). But when the appealing Kathleen and Harold take over things, this story becomes much more complicated than a simple whodunit—it delightfully turns into serious literature. Readers should hope for more captivating novels from this promising author.
An impressive family tale with a strong cast.Pub Date: June 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-945212-50-5
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Quill Mark Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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
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