The final installment in Price's Georgia trilogy (Bright Captivity, 1991, and Where Shadows Go, 1993) concludes the 19th- century saga of the Fraser and Couper families. This time, though, the Civil War, which makes a belated rescue attempt of a sentimental narrative bogged down in past sorrows, may be the true hero of the piece. The year 1852 finds heroine Anne Fraser struggling to survive on a widow's pension, having lost in rapid succession her husband, a daughter, and both parents. Her courage and fortitude are further tested when financial hardships force her to abandon the family plantation on St. Simons Island and take up residence in the inland town of Marietta. Relying heavily on the support of her four stalwart children, as well as her servant Eve, who is, as both women relentlessly declare, so much more a friend than slave, Anne worries that she's become a burden. But her spirits improve as she reconciles with her deceased daughter's husband and makes the acquaintance of Louisa Fletcher, a forthright Northerner whose opposition to slavery allows for several genteel discussions on the ethics of owning people. One of Anne's daughters becomes attached to a doctor with Union sympathies, another to a fire-breathing secessionist. When Anne's beloved son joins the Confederate army, the stage is more than set for the Civil War to come lumbering through—on page 450—bringing some much needed dramatic conflict in its wake. More lives are lost, redeeming babies are born, and it's all wrapped up in a strangely truncated ending that is reminiscent of the author's inspirational books. An earnest, good-hearted drama whose besetting sins of slow pace and florid dialect are unlikely to bother Price's loyal fans. This last of a trilogy will also be featured this spring in a national PBS documentary entitled Eugenia Price's South. (Literary Guild & Doubleday selections)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-26703-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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
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PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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