Talky uplift and a self-congratulatory tone bog down the novel, but through compelling characters, Netzer raises a...
Netzer’s debut, about a heavily pregnant woman left to care for her dying mother and autistic son while her Nobel-winning husband travels to the moon, takes the literary concept of charmingly quirky characters to a new level.
Sunny is born in Burma in 1981 to missionary parents. After her father’s death at the hands of the Communists, Sunny’s mother, Emma, settles with Sunny in rural western Pennsylvania, where she mistakenly hopes Sunny will be accepted despite her glaring abnormality—she is hairless and permanently bald, and Emma will not allow her to wear a wig. Sunny finds her soul mate in Maxon, the youngest son of cartoonishly abusive white-trash parents. If Sunny is brilliant and a little odd, Maxon is a genius far along the autism continuum. For Maxon, whose work with artificial intelligence has made him rich and won him a Nobel by age 30, the boundary between human and robot is erasable. He plots interpersonal interactions in terms of mathematical formulas. Nevertheless, he and Sunny’s love is shown as Shakespearian in its passion and depth. But when Sunny becomes pregnant with their son Bubber, maternal instincts push her toward conformity: wig wearing and suburbia. She wants to cure Bubber of the autism he has evidently inherited and becomes less patient with Maxon’s exceptionality. Sunny is far along in her second pregnancy and coping with Emma’s approaching death from cancer when Maxon leaves for his mission to colonize the moon with robots. While he faces a crisis in space that shows him how much his relationships on earth matter, Sunny stops wearing her wig, medicating Bubber to control him and maintaining Emma endlessly on life support. She drops her pretense of normality, only to realize that there may be no such thing as normal; everyone wears a metaphorical wig.
Talky uplift and a self-congratulatory tone bog down the novel, but through compelling characters, Netzer raises a provocative question: Is autism a disability, a gift or the norm of the future?Pub Date: July 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00707-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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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