A feathery feel-good story about triumph over adversity—probably another hit for Berg.
A quadriplegic mother, the 1964 Summer of Freedom and a timely visit from Elvis all come to play in Berg’s latest quick-read tearjerker.
During this historic summer in Mississippi, 13-year-old Diana Dunn is less concerned with black-voter registration (in fact, she’s not quite sure what all the fuss is about) than putting on backyard plays with best friend Suralee, and carving out some kind of independence from a life of caring for her disabled mother. Late in her pregnancy, Diana’s mother Paige contracted polio, and then miraculously gave birth to Diana in an iron lung. Her husband quickly divorced her and offered to adopt their baby, but Paige was made of stronger stuff and insisted on raising Diana herself. After three years in the iron lung, Paige returned home (Diana is raised by caretaker Peacie) paralyzed below the neck, and with a fierce determination to do right by her daughter. The two share a warm, companionable relationship, as Paige rules the roost despite her immobility (Diana obediently offers up a finger for Paige to bite whenever she misbehaves). In fact, Paige is a bit of a wonder—she has a couple of suitors, she paints, writes songs and always has time for backyard sunbathing. No-nonsense Peacie helps care for Paige and Diana, and through her and her boyfriend LaRue, the struggle for civil rights comes to the Dunn household. LaRue has recently learned how to read and has become politicized, despite the Sheriff’s ominous warning not to cause trouble. Diana’s teen worries (kissing for the first time, among them) are soon overshadowed by the difficulties of real life, including LaRue’s imprisonment and the very real potential of social services putting her in foster care. Berg (The Year of Pleasures, 2005, etc.) has the components of a forceful drama in place, but her tale lacks emotional resonance and offers an ending that defies the rest of the novel’s realism.
A feathery feel-good story about triumph over adversity—probably another hit for Berg.Pub Date: April 11, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6161-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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