So absurdly improbable that it can be swallowed whole: a witty spoof, nicely put together and hard to put down.
In a comedy of errors from second-novelist McPhee (The Center of Things, 2001), two sisters set out to dig up a family secret and find that they’ve struck a mother lode of them.
Lillian and Veronica Moore, although both fully grown and quite independent young women, enjoy a strongly familial relationship of the sort that sisters more typically have in their teens than their 30s. A good thing, too, since each is about the only thing the other has by way of family. Their father Charles died in a car accident 25 years ago (Veronica was with him but survived), and their mother Agnes moved to New Zealand more than a dozen years back and isn’t often in touch. Lillian, a neurologist, has given up on marriage and recently duped an unemployed actor into getting her pregnant during a one-night stand. Veronica, who writes for a TV soap opera and knows all about such plot twists, understands her sister’s frustration but still thinks this was kind of low. Together, the two hire a private detective to straighten out the mystery of their late father: where he’s buried (Agnes refused to tell them), where he was going at the time of the accident, and what he did for a living (another secret Mother won’t tell). The detective is frank: He’ll probably never find anything, and if he does it will most likely be something horrible or scandalous. But Lillian and Veronica can deal with scandal. For one thing, the hapless chump who impregnated Lillian (without knowing it) landed a part in Veronica’s show and the two (the chump and Veronica, not the chump and Lillian) have started dating. For another, Veronica and Lillian may not be sisters. And their father may not have been their father. Is this some sort of postmodern whodunit? Not exactly—more like an old-fashioned farce.
So absurdly improbable that it can be swallowed whole: a witty spoof, nicely put together and hard to put down.Pub Date: June 7, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-6072-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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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