A powerfully imagined novel of the new Germany worth sticking with through its dull spots.
Left behind by his East German parents, who flee to the west following the collapse of the GDR, young Carl Bischoff falls in with an unruly crew of utopian anarchists in Berlin—where he finds himself as a poet.
In response to his mother Inge's flood of letters, Carl assures her that he's looking after their house in the central state of Thuringia. But he drives his father Walter's beloved Zhiguli to Berlin, where he makes a little money as an unpapered cabbie and lives and works with a group of squatters whose mission is to rebuild a wide stretch of dilapidated and war-damaged buildings for people to live in. The more involved in the communal project and visions of a new future Carl becomes, the more inspired he is as a poet. His poems, he is told, capture "the present moment and its sound at perception's ground zero." Initially separated en route to a transit camp across the border, his parents make do with various jobs on the other side (Walter teaches computer programming). Ultimately, and unpredictably, they find freedom—with Carl—in Los Angeles. There, his accordion in tow, Walter plans on joining a band. A prizewinner and bestseller in Europe, the novel is loosely and sometimes elusively tied to its era, departing reality with corrosive dark visions including Nazis who look like Elvis. As a result, the story doesn't always have the resonance it should. Long sections of the nearly 600-page book rather ploddingly record day-to-day developments. But Seiler's dry wit and command of language, which can itself be musical, keep the pages humming. And when things slow down, there's always an eccentric called the Shepherd and his pet goat, Dodo, for comic relief.
A powerfully imagined novel of the new Germany worth sticking with through its dull spots.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781681378534
Page Count: 592
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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