An often colorful novel that refreshingly doesn’t fall back on clichés.
Two troubled Trinidadian women discover a surprising connection in this debut novel.
Trinidadian immigrant Bea Clark is a successful history professor living in Boston, but despite her accomplishments, she suffers from crippling depression. Her low self-esteem springs both from her father’s abandonment of the family when she was young and her mother’s near-constant criticism (including typical belittling comments such as “I don't know what I do wrong in this life to deserve a child like you”). After Bea lands in a psychiatric facility following a nervous breakdown, she starts the slow process of rebuilding her life, including shifting her career to clinical psychology. In Trinidad, 15-year-old Tina Ramlogan is also adrift, as her mother, Nalini, refuses to divulge the identity of her father. When Nalini dies in a tragic accident, orphaned Tina is sent to live in Port of Spain with her stern, conservative grandmother, and before long, Tina is acting out in typical teenage fashion. When a twist of fate brings Tina and Bea together, they discover a hidden connection that may help them create a new family—and finally give them both the sense of belonging they long for. Readers will find it a pleasure to watch Bea and Tina evolve as their circumstances change over the courses of their story arcs. Persaud offers an equally enjoyable glimpse into the close-knit, and sometimes-claustrophobic, Trinidadian society. Tina’s first-person narration is lively and humorous, delivered in a distinctive island patois that makes the feisty teen jump off the page. Bea’s sections, written in a more distant third person, lack the same intimacy, and as a result, she’s less distinct—more a combination of traits than a full-fledged person. The shifts in point of view can be jarring at times, and readers may occasionally feel as if two separate novels have been awkwardly stitched together. In the end, however, the characters’ deep pain, particularly Tina’s, comes through in a story that illustrates the cancerous power of long-held family secrets and the relief that can come from finally confronting the truth.
An often colorful novel that refreshingly doesn’t fall back on clichés.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0992697709
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Blue China Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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