Skippable.
Road trip set to music only the author can hear.
Pesky (and expensive) copyright issues keep trite song lyrics out of this debut novel—but not the titles. Idiosyncratic picks of 1970s and ’80s pop music punctuate the meandering narrative, thanks to a heroine who loves nothing more than a mix. Laney looks for answers, only she “didn’t know what the answer was, only that it felt good, right somehow, that all the feelings of listening to the records could be summed up by one small cassette. That you’d have a marker of some sort to show where you’d been and what you’d listened to, and who or what it all meant.” (Clearly, it also saves the author the trouble of actually writing about these things.) When her mother is stricken with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and must endure chemo and radiation, Laney’s family falls apart, kinda. And kinda not. Her father, who sells arty ceramics via catalogue, doesn’t really know what to do. The only place she can think straight is on the road—and now that her mother’s feeling better, maybe she’d like to come along for the ride. Laney will even listen to Broadway show tunes if it’ll make Mom happy. (Just why these are so much worse than such Laney favorites as John Denver’s whining ode to his first wife, “Annie’s Song,” or the more-whacked-than-thou Butthole Surfers, is not made clear.) Whoa—is this Graceland? Shrine to Elvis. Whoa—Las Vegas? Looks like a neon graveyard. Every place and every thing has a soundtrack. It’s like this girl she knew who lost her virginity to a U-2 song. Whenever Laney hears that song, she thinks of her thinking of that. And this other song that makes her think of her boyfriend Jeremy thinking of his girlfriend before her, quote unquote.
Skippable.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-6983-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Downtown Press/Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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