From anthologists Friesner (Alien Pregnant by Elvis) and Greenberg (Sisters of the Night, p. 1046, etc.): an inspired collection of 32 stories tying art to vampirism, or the reverse, the arts being painting, music, film, sculpture, dance, writing, and such special exhibits as window glazing, weaving (with bloodstained flax), puppetry, architecture, collage, jewelry- making, and guerrilla mural art with spray cans. The contributors here are largely unknown, but, even so, the standouts are too many to praise. Fresh indeed is P.D. Cacek's ``Yrena,'' about a seductive, homeless child vampire, freezing in the snow following the October Revolution. She's taken in by a former Leningrad painter to the Czar, now destitute but for his relatives, whom he feeds day by day to Yrena while he paints her haunting beauty. Don't miss Benjamin Adams's ``The Frieze of Life,'' about tortured Norwegian painter Edvard Munch's insanity and his famous painting of The Vampire. Munch re-creates this female form obsessively throughout his life, being the unwitting slave of Melpomene, the Greek Muse of tragedy, who has chosen Munch to be her personal artist. Also admirable is Susan Shwartz's ``Dramaturge,'' about Gonzago, the Player King, and his family of actor vampires who've arrived at Elsinore only to find everyone dead and Hamlet buried. So they dig him up, feed him vampire blood, and let him join the dead Ophelia, herself a vampire in great disrepair. Pamela D. Hodgson's ``The Age of Maturity'' tells of Auguste Rodin's mistresses and how he steals souls to put into his sculptures. Lisa Lepovetsky's ``Pas du Mort'' paints a New Orleans ballet dancer who gets the inspiration for her Vampire Dance in a cemetery, only to be so successful at it that she attracts real vampires. Breathless tales of the blood-inspired creative process that really suck you in. Many loud wingflaps.
Pub Date: Dec. 16, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-470-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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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