Completely juvenile and thoroughly enchanting.
Silly and very droll debut by a London paleontologist who likes pirates and has obviously grown up on old Monty Python reruns.
The story of the high seas, daring, romance, ham, and men who like to dress up in women’s clothing begins in the 1850s near the Galapagos Islands, where a crew of jolly—very jolly—pirates loll about the beach all day, planning sumptuous Ham roasts and toying with astrolabes (or possibly sextants—they can never quite get them straight). Worried that discipline is getting slack, the Pirate Captain decides to take his men to sea and set upon the first vessel they find, which happens to be the Beagle, with Darwin aboard. After ransacking the ship for not much plunder, the pirates agree to spare Darwin’s life in exchange for a trip back to London with him and his trained chimpanzee, Bobo. Darwin expects to make a fortune off Bobo on the music-hall circuit, though he faces stiff opposition from the dastardly Bishop of Oxford, Soapy Sam Wilberforce, who has invested heavily in P.T. Barnum’s traveling freak show and dislikes competition. The bishop has gone so far as to kidnap Darwin’s brother Erasmus in hopes of persuading Darwin to cancel the show. Back in London, Darwin puts the pirates up at the Royal Society, passing them off as scientists. Bobo takes the West End by storm (his enactment of The Journal of the Plague Year is a great smash), and the pirates are soon the toast of the town. They manage to save Erasmus, vindicate Darwin, and thwart the bishop’s scheme for extracting the life force from nubile young women (hint: the machine won’t work on men in drag). They even manage to invent a dirigible and go a fair way toward getting Darwin laid. All that’s missing are some silly songs and Terry Gilliam animations.
Completely juvenile and thoroughly enchanting.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-42321-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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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