TWISTER

Name: TWISTER
Author: Genanne Walsh
ISBN: 978-1-62557-937-9

by Genanne Walsh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2015

The steady pacing of Walsh’s novel occasionally works against it, but the quiet revelations that emerge lend it a surprising...

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A young man’s wartime death increases pre-existing tensions in a Midwestern community even as nightmarish weather approaches.

The town at the heart of Walsh’s first novel is one with plenty of history, and the book allows lots of time for the connections between its inhabitants to reveal themselves. In the first third of the novel, prosaic passages describing a gathering storm are intercut with portraits of the residents—particularly Rose, the grieving mother of Lance, a soldier killed overseas. Slowly, tensions emerge: Rose’s strained relationship with her stepsister Stella, for one, as well as an ongoing dispute over property. Juxtaposed with these is the figure of the Old Man, whose musings on life after having been struck by lightning add to the novel’s themes of festering grievances and unresolved guilt. From there, Walsh reveals the past events that led these characters to this point. The reader gets a better sense of Lance as his fate looms larger, and other characters become more fully developed: the Old Man, before his near-fatal accident, shows a less sympathetic side; Ward, Stella’s husband, reveals a more complex personality. And throughout, there’s a sense of economic foreboding: even without the catastrophic weather implied by the title, ominous things are on the horizon for many of the characters. The pace of the novel’s first part can feel overly deliberate, and Walsh’s lack of specificity in terms of allusions to recent history and political debates is a stylistic device that doesn’t entirely click. But when the novel hits its stride, it moves along very well.

The steady pacing of Walsh’s novel occasionally works against it, but the quiet revelations that emerge lend it a surprising power.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-62557-937-9

Page Count: -

Publisher: Black Lawrence Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.