An excellent story of the American dream that manages a remarkable combination of breadth and depth.
In a family saga that spans the 20th century, Laing provides an expansive portrait of American life on the Mississippi in this first of two volumes.
Willy McGregor, ignoring his father’s advice, lies about his age to fight in World War I. But when he comes out the other side, aged and traumatized by the things he’s seen and done, he finds himself lost, without a home. It’s this setup—a broken warrior/poet in a shaken world—that gives the novel its potency. Much of Willy’s story is familiar: He finds a new home, puts down roots, starts a family, and meets the many challenges of these and other milestones. But through it all, Willy’s bone-deep knowledge of how frail happiness is shows through, even as he demonstrates a heroic tenacity for keeping its warmth alive. Willy’s idealized vision of contentment can’t last, but illness and loss make it shine brighter. Of course, the cycle of life doesn’t affect Willy alone, and the rich cast of secondary characters gradually changes as Willy’s children come of age and the focus of the story shifts. Eventually, Willy’s grandson, Dan, takes over the narration, and the story grows more and more distant from the old, blessed years as the book approaches the modern age. The story unfolds as if told by a fireside, sometimes breezing over years in an instant and at others, lingering over the details of singular moments and memories (“a husband smoking his pipe and reading the paper while his wife knitted, their eyes meeting for a moment, a warm connection, a glimpse of their palpable love”). As the first installment in a duology, the story doesn’t wrap up at the end, despite the book’s length, but the overall theme of the pursuit of happiness could scarcely be stronger. Even if there were no second volume to further chart this family’s peaks and valleys through the years, its genuine understanding of life would make it a stirring success.
An excellent story of the American dream that manages a remarkable combination of breadth and depth.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0991173402
Page Count: 426
Publisher: Signal Flag Publishing & Promotions LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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