A smart, entertaining send-up of celebrity under siege.
A rock star searching for his soul embarks on an underworld picaresque in this gonzo satirical romance.
Rook Heisenberg, frontman for the stupefyingly vapid band the Little Bang, experiences every facet of rock-star life—the adoring fans, the glitzy mansion, the three-ways with random bimbos—and a dazed sense of anomie, salved only by memories of his long-lost high-school sweetheart Hula. Once an Internet search and an e-mail reforge that link, Rook is off to Amsterdam, where he discovers that Hula has become the moll of Svidrigailov, a Russian gangster who has put her to work in his brothel, and that Rook and Hula have a teenage daughter named Boudicca, whom Svidrigailov has sequestered in Mumbai. Accompanied by his bodyguard, a beautiful Chinese woman who is as blasé about mass killings as she is about group sex, Rook sets out for India to rescue Boudicca from white slavery. There he is overwhelmed by street urchins, Bollywood stars, menacing thugs who melt when he croons to them, and a pharmaceutical consciousness-raiser so potent that it threatens to destroy his narcissistic cocoon. Rook’s quest gives the author a broad canvas for a funny, sardonic portrait of fame at its most inescapable: as he dispenses autographs and $100 bills to an ever-changing throng of autograph-seekers and flunkies who secretly despise him, he’s constantly confronted with billboards of himself hawking his fashion line. Glavin tells the story with a polished prose style and threads it with intriguing allusions to everything from magic squares to Van Gogh and Dostoevsky. Amid the breezy, Tarantino-esque provocations, he smuggles pathos into Rook’s search for family and meaning, though the debauches and dismemberments proceed in such a casual, jaded tone that they drain some of the novel’s emotional charge. But this diverting, imaginative read keeps the pages turning.
A smart, entertaining send-up of celebrity under siege.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0982546628
Page Count: 498
Publisher: Kevin Glavin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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
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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