An elucidating portrayal of a noted figure in European history.
In this installment of a series celebrating the lives of renowned Italians and Italian-Americans, the author draws on imagination and research to fill in the many gaps in the historical record of Italian merchant and explorer Giovanni Caboto, better known as John Cabot.
The book follows Giovanni from childhood in Genoa until his family relocates to Venice and Giovanni nudges his way into the fringes of the city’s elite and begins to travel for the family trading business. Financial ruin drives them out of the city, and Giovanni makes a living designing public works in Spain, hoping to get royal authorization to seek out routes to Asia, just like his rival Cristoforo Colombo. When the Spanish monarchs refuse him, he relocates to England, where he is able to convince Henry VII to approve his voyages, ultimately making two trips to North America and claiming land for England. Working from a scanty historical record (historians are not even sure whether Caboto survived his second voyage), Selbo (Piazza Carousel, 2017, etc.) animates the era with strong pacing and well-developed characters, including Giovanni’s brother, Piero, his most committed supporter, and his wife, Mattea, an independent-minded daughter of Venetian nobility. Some of the imagined scenes may be a bit heavy on coincidence (Giovanni and Cristoforo first meet as teenagers in a Genoa map shop, and the adult Giovanni’s first voyage to the New World is on one of Cristoforo’s ships), but the plot is so emotionally and historically satisfying that the reader is likely to forgive this. The writing is skilled, though characters are at times overly aware of their place in history (“These are instruments necessary for what I would like to call the European Age of Discovery,” Giovanni’s teacher declares). On the whole, however, the book is both an enjoyable read and a well-informed exercise in historical speculation.
An elucidating portrayal of a noted figure in European history.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947431-16-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Barbera Foundation
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
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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