by John Shirley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2001
Without question the worst book of the year, a place it will hold throughout all 2001—unless Shirley’s next swim through...
Laughably overpriced wacko novel that is the Plan Nine from Outer Space of horror titles and deserves burial under a mound of manure. Looking to top his dubious distinction in publishing the grisliest vampire tale of 1992 (Wetbones), he devotes his latest fiction to a loving catalogue of hell’s endless horrors: impalements, throat slashings, AIDS carcinomas and bedsores, people who die again and again, having themselves drowned for the joy of it and for the wonderful period of relief while dead before reanimation for another a horrible death. Hell, you see, inflicts death upon death on the same sufferer, over and over and over, in endless hideous variations. Shirley has the same right to chronicle such atrocities as the Marquis de Sade or Hieronymous Bosch, but his lurid depictions lack any of their art. In this hellscape of unrelieved emotional and physical carnage, nine-year-olds are repeatedly raped, burned with cigarettes, and sent out to beg, however fruitless their begging. The plot? Very vague, with two alien intelligences overlooking these horrors and one of them enjoying them so much that he’s made to stay here and serve the Master.
Without question the worst book of the year, a place it will hold throughout all 2001—unless Shirley’s next swim through feces challenges it. There’s some audience that sucks on his lollipops of pain?Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2001
ISBN: 1-931081-09-3
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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by John Shirley
BOOK REVIEW
by John Shirley
BOOK REVIEW
by John Shirley
by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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by Harper Lee
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993
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
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by Paulo Coelho ; illustrated by Christoph Niemann ; translated by Margaret Jull Costa
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by Paulo Coelho ; translated by Eric M.B. Becker
BOOK REVIEW
by Paulo Coelho ; translated by Zoë Perry
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SEEN & HEARD
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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