Vividly atmospheric settings steal the show from Webb’s meandering story as Condley visits old soldiers from both sides of...
The author of Fields of Fire (not reviewed), one of the best Vietnam War novels ever, sends a fictional ex-Marine to contemporary Vietnam to hunt down a murderous deserter.
Webb, a former Marine and secretary of the Navy, offers a heartbreaking portrait of modern Vietnam in the character of Dzung, a highly skilled soldier who lost his family fighting the communists and now makes a paltry living as a Saigon bicycle cabbie: home is a miserable shack where he lives with his young wife and five children, one of whom is dying of an infectious disease. Dzung is a close friend of Brandon Condley’s, a former Marine who stayed in Southeast Asia after the war as a security consultant and freelance trouble-shooter for the CIA. Condley blows into Saigon with Hanson Muir, a pompous but well-meaning forensic anthropologist searching for the remains of American soldiers. When Dzung learns that the bones of Muir’s latest find are not those of the American deserter Theodore Deville, a homicidal turncoat Marine who liked to sever the hands of his victims and who led an ambush on Condley’s platoon during the war, he is forced by a member of the Vietnamese security to begin training as an assassin. Condley is sure that Deville is still alive, and he uses his almost too cordial friendship with retired Communist Intelligence operative Colonel Pham (Pham’s daughter, Van, has a crush on Condley) to dig up clues (and another body) in a forbidding hilltop village; a Soviet observer’s seedy Moscow apartment; and in some sleazy Bangkok dives, where Deville might be working as a drug smuggler with the Vietnamese Communist regime. Meanwhile, Dzung wonders whether he’ll be able to kill his best friend Condley when the inevitable command comes.
Vividly atmospheric settings steal the show from Webb’s meandering story as Condley visits old soldiers from both sides of the conflict, united in their inexplicable love for Vietnam.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-553-80214-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
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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