Enough jabs at law and criminal justice to make a point, all packaged in a courtroom drama that’s pure entertainment.
Krakoff’s debut satire delivers the tale of modest kosher butcher Leopold Plotkin, whose simple act of smearing mud on his shop window leads to a grandiose trial.
Leopold’s been socially awkward since he was a little boy in Fettig, capital city of the Republic. Once his family bequeaths him the butcher shop, he’s uncomfortable displaying his snazzy meat-cutting skills to draw customers. So when that fails to boost sales, Leopold opts for covering the display window with mud. Fettigians, however, are upset, seeing the shrouding of a commercial window as an affront to capitalism. Ensuing protests and demonstrations ultimately become so rowdy that authorities arrest Leopold and throw him in the Purgatory House of Detention for instigating the Mud Crisis. And so begins this farcical take on the justice system, in which a criminal trial commences with a lawyer’s “Opening Rant,” and the prosecution must prove “beyond a Nagging Doubt” that the accused is guilty. Leopold faces seemingly impossible odds. Presiding Justice Stifel, for one, is so convinced of Leopold’s guilt that he overrules every objection from the defense—decreeing each one an interruption—and asks the jury for a verdict before a single witness has even testified. Fortunately, Leopold has employee, pal, and chicken plucker Primo Astigmatopolous and childhood friend Ana Bloom on his side, so there may be a slight chance of an acquittal. Krakoff’s satirical slant definitely has bite—Stifel accessing the courtroom via a dumbwaiter, for example, speaks volumes. But the uproarious novel is first and foremost a comedy, rife with absurdist humor. Some of it is even a comedy of errors: public defender Felix Bleifus, unaware that Leopold’s a butcher, is terrified when he spots blood on his potential client’s shirt. “Unlike most of my competitors,” Leopold says, “I do my own slaughtering.” Krakoff, though, still manages a coherent, engrossing plot. His good-natured protagonist is easy to like, and readers will surely be on edge during the trial, particularly because at least one juror, who admits to despising Leopold, has all but convicted him.
Enough jabs at law and criminal justice to make a point, all packaged in a courtroom drama that’s pure entertainment.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-68114-197-8
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Anaphora Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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