by Lavinia Greenlaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2001
While many will appreciate Greenlaw’s intimate portrayal of Mary’s life, the focus here is diffused by less-clearly-realized...
A teenaged girl’s coming of age and the return of a small-town madman make for strange but not altogether unwelcome bedfellows in this affecting debut.
Camptown is a nowhere English city described by poet Greenlaw as “awkward and diminished.” It’s the kind of place that has plenty of history—dating back to the Roman occupation—but none of it is especially interesting. As unassuming as it is, however, it’s where 17-year-old Mary George, from the small nearby village of Allnorthover, spends most of her time. Mary seems more awkward than she is—with a ragged, boyish haircut, glasses, and clunky outfits—and her interesting mixture of adolescent confusion and remarkably resilient spirit make her an engaging protagonist for a story without much of a narrative center. The outside element used to prod things along is the return to town of Tom Hepple, a lifelong lunatic. Walking by the reservoir that now covers his old family home, Tom is convinced that he sees Mary George walking on the water. Even though the townspeople dismiss any worries about his potential for violence, Mary’s mother recognizes the critical part of his personality right away: “He was a force, a hurricane, sweeping things up, breaking down doors, sucking people in and under.” Tom’s attempts to readjust to Allnorthover life, though, are put on the back burner by the author, who devotes many of her words to rich descriptions of Mary’s episodic, mostly rudderless life: smoking dope with her best friend Billy, hanging out at the record store, attempting to dye her clothes black (a stunt that comically backfires), and fumbling toward a relationship with a boy named Daniel. The ’70s setting is richly evoked, with the threat of energy and water shortages looming over daily events and the raw, slashing sounds of punk rock cutting through the local youth with a fiery intensity.
While many will appreciate Greenlaw’s intimate portrayal of Mary’s life, the focus here is diffused by less-clearly-realized investigations into her family’s past and the recurring figure of Tom—who will drag us toward an ending we didn’t need or want.Pub Date: July 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-09523-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
Share your opinion of this book
More by Lavinia Greenlaw
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Paulo Coelho
BOOK REVIEW
by Paulo Coelho ; illustrated by Christoph Niemann ; translated by Margaret Jull Costa
BOOK REVIEW
by Paulo Coelho ; translated by Eric M.B. Becker
BOOK REVIEW
by Paulo Coelho ; translated by Zoë Perry
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
50
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.