Another multifaceted gem of a political thriller from Seymour (Condition Black, 1991, etc.), who has a flair for lighting on contemporary hot spots, in this case, the cockpit once known as Yugoslavia. Bill Penn, a former operative of Britain's Security Service now working as a private investigator, is hired by wealthy Mary Braddock to check into the death of her daughter (Dorothy Mowat) in Croatia. A farmer's son who quit MI5 when he realized his lack of a degree precluded advancement, the still bitter Penn arrives in Zagreb resolved to develop only enough information to fill in the blanks left by the Foreign Office's evasive notification. In short order, however, he's impelled to make a proper job of his assignment, in part because Westminster's local representatives warn him off. Doggedly pursuing all available leads, he learns that Dorrie came into the country with a young Croat she'd met in Australia. Both were cruelly killed and buried in a mass grave after the young man's village was overrun by neighboring Serbs in 1991. Having identified Dorrie's killer (militia chieftain Milan Stankovi) and documented the massacre, Penn is captured on his way out of the Serbian town. Although badly beaten, he escapes and faxes his provisional findings to Mrs. Braddock. By now, Penn's inquiries have alarmed expedient diplomats who are determined to suppress any proof of war crimes, which could disrupt the truce they're brokering between the vicious brutes who lead both sides. Penn's client nonetheless induces him to go back behind the lines and bring Stankovic to book if not justice. In search of personal as well as professional redemption, Penn again treks into the heart of danger and, against the odds, achieves a victory of sorts. An arresting narrative of physical adventure, geopolitical intrigue, and moral ambiguity in a savagely tribal world where ancient enmities have swamped the rule of law.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-100968-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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
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