An uneven, poorly paced debut that nonetheless shows considerable promise.
A slow-moving character study of a 19-year-old girl whose plans for her life gradually fall apart.
Honor student Mandy Boyle has just won a college scholarship, and she happily envisions the endless possibilities of life away from her stifling parents and small New York State hometown. Though she has a tender (and touching) relationship with her father, she can hardly blind herself to the fact that he's a drunk and a loaf-about, horribly henpecked by Mandy's mother. Mrs. Boyle is a rare piece of work: chronically ill with lupus, anxiety disorders, and asthma, she’s also terminally disillusioned, which leads her to sexually abuse Mandy. Daughter and father retreat to the basement, where they work on projects and discuss philosophy, or they shuffle to the local bar, where Mandy studies and Dad gets drunk. Finally able to leave this behind, Mandy thrives at college until her father suddenly dies. Although she defies her mother, who wants her to quit school and get a job at the local department store, Mandy flounders when she returns to college after the funeral. She begins skipping classes, alienating friends, and spending most of her days in bed getting high. She wants someone to save her, but unfortunately the only candidate who presents himself is Booner, a drainage-cleaner living in Queens. Mandy drops out of school, moves in with him, smokes more pot, and gets a secretarial job. Her downward spiral is quick and all too plausible, as her once-bright future is reduced to waiting for Booner to come home from work. When it seems things couldn’t get worse, they do: Mandy gets pregnant, and Booner becomes frighteningly possessive. Although first-timer Brown thoughtfully illustrates how a smart girl can make bad decisions, the heroine pales in comparison to those around her. Her parents’ elegantly dismal relationship, and even Booner's life, ultimately prove more interesting than Mandy's bleak story.
An uneven, poorly paced debut that nonetheless shows considerable promise.Pub Date: July 7, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50373-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
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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