Irish to the gills, a festive delight, and fully aware of what it is—and what it isn’t.
Newspaper columns and a stage adaptation (The Brother) quilted out of O’Brien’s novels make for a merry little patchwork of literary pleasures from the late (d. 1966) comic master (At Swim-Two-Birds, 1939).
Jamie O’Neill (whose own 2002 masterpiece he titled At Swim, Two Boys) explains that in 1940, when London publishers roundly rejected The Third Policeman, O’Brien’s second novel, the author “turned to journalism” and, over the next 20 years, wrote a column for the Irish Times that, to judge by the 85 short selections here, was dedicated often to the construction of a shaggy-dog sort of tiny tale leading up to the most witty, appalling, groan-worthy, intricate, or inventive pun conceivable. O’Brien (writing as Myles na Gopaleen) often employed his pair of fictional friends, Keats and Chapman (who “met” in the Keats ode on Chapman’s Homer), putting them into any variety of situation needed to produce the desired result. Keats, hence, in “Stradivarius,” is a violinist whose dog, named Byrne, gets lost. Keats goes on practicing even so. Chapman, “looking in for an after-supper pipe,” is surprised at Keats’s “composure.” Asks Keats: “And why should I not fiddle . . . while Byrne roams?” The delicacy of the writing and delivery is all: synopsized thus, the reader’s groan will dominate, but along with the light-footed subtlety and pitch-perfect drollery of O’Brien’s setup, even the most awful spoonerism will delight rather than gag, whether “In a pique in Darien,” “Please Byrne when Red,” or “I’m afraid I put my food in it.” In the case of “The Brother,” the long monologue adapted by Eamon Morrissey, what steals the show is the voice of an Irish drinking man, who has his own wandering inventiveness, hyperbole, and fancy: and who, along with his never-seen brother, is in fact being “written,” by someone known only as “your man,” into stories and situations that—well, that are soulful, sad, absurd, hilarious at once, ending both in laughter and in death.
Irish to the gills, a festive delight, and fully aware of what it is—and what it isn’t.Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-32907-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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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