A riveting, albeit sugar-coated, account punctuated with ingenuity, family feuds, tragedy, and spellbinding success.
In this intriguing novel based on the life of Ernest Gallo, Richardson tracks the rise of the billionaire Californian winemaker.
When Ernest Gallo was young, his Aunt Tillie gave him a tarot card reading which predicted that he would become “a very successful businessman…[in] the oil business…or the wine business.” The young Ernest could not possibly perceive the alarming accuracy of his aunt’s prediction or the arduous journey ahead of him. One of three brothers, Ernest was born in 1909 in Jackson, California, into a humble Italian immigrant family. In the early 1920s, his parents settled in Modesto, purchasing arable land where they would plant and cultivate a vineyard and sell their grapes. Ernest found himself at constant loggerheads with his father, a deeply stubborn man, whose violent temper would later have tragic consequences. The novel charts the evolution of Ernest’s business brain, from his wily negotiations with unsavory market traders to becoming one of the world’s biggest wine producers. Richardson animates the Gallo’s ascendance with realistic, well-paced dialogue as in this warning from a neighbor: “A winery? Now? Boys, it’s the Dirty Thirties. You’ll end up worse than yer old man. Take my advice: Don’t do it. Stick to what you know.” Richardson portrays Gallo as an avuncular, approachable businessman, a stark contrast to “the 5-foot-4-inch terror of his industry,” as described by Forbes. She also glosses over his unpleasant standoff with the United Farmworkers Union in the 1970s, which gained him the reputation of being a bully. Richardson’s novel is part of The Mentoris Project, a series of books that aims to promote the successes of great Italians and Italian-Americans. This, to a degree, explains the author’s propensity to overlook Gallo’s less admirable characteristics. Nevertheless, the novel remains a charming, tenderly written tribute to Gallo and his remarkable achievements, which will certainly be of great interest to wine buffs, particularly those keen to discover more about the history of the American industry.
A riveting, albeit sugar-coated, account punctuated with ingenuity, family feuds, tragedy, and spellbinding success.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-947431-01-0
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Barbera Foundation, Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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