With matter-of-fact, precise prose and edgy characterizations, Diamond shows strong potential despite the spiritual...
Tracing the aftermath of a child’s accidental death, first-time British novelist Diamond combines elements of a ghost story with those of a psychological thriller.
Policeman Jack Philips fatally strikes Laura Jenkins with his car when the child runs into the street from behind a bus. Married with two young daughters, Jack feels overwhelming guilt although he is fully exonerated at the inquest. He begins to see Laura’s ghost occasionally. On medical leave, he explores with a sympathetic counselor how his guilt over Laura relates to emotional pain he’s tamped down for years concerning his mother’s suicide when he was a young child. But he cannot share his feelings with his wife Sam, and their marriage collapses around the time he decides to leave the police department. Meanwhile, Laura’s distraught mother Lisa also sees Laura’s ghost. She and Laura’s father Derek have already drifted apart in their marriage, sleeping in separate bedrooms for years. Now Laura’s death sends them down very different paths. Derek becomes obsessed with news reports of children killed in driving accidents and secretly stalks Jack. Lisa is drawn to spiritual remedies. She goes to a tarot reader and to a medium, who not only sees Laura but Lisa’s father, who died of a heart attack when Lisa was 14. Like Jack, Lisa finds herself dealing with both her present and past sense of loss. Also like Jack, she reconnects with her surviving parent. Attending a spiritualist church, Lisa is told that Laura is worried about Jack. After she invites Derek (whose inner life, like Sam’s, remains mostly unexplored) to a sad, touchingly rendered dinner, Lisa seeks out Jack, now living alone, though still a devoted dad. When Derek attempts a desperate act of revenge, it is thwarted by Laura’s ghost.
With matter-of-fact, precise prose and edgy characterizations, Diamond shows strong potential despite the spiritual gobbledygook that casts a phony redemptive shadow.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59051-301-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
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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