Despite a slight relaxation of comic tension at the close, a wonderfully intelligent, generously imagined, skillfully...
Many funny moments and a beguiling cast of bona fide English eccentrics adorn this charming picaresque coming-of-ager – the fictional debut of veteran novelist Paul Theroux’s son.
The story chronicles Horace Littlefair’s passage from the delightfully deranged provincial village of Great Much up to London to begin employment with the nondescript newspaper (the South London Bugle) that’s owned and operated by his hustling, social-climbing uncle Derwent Boothby. Theroux sets the plot aboil quickly, shifting his focus from the helpless Horace (who’s immediately victimized by a predatory cabdriver) to such prominent secondary characters as phlegmatic landlord Ugandan Mr. Narayan; centenarian Agnes Kettle (the subject of Horace’s first in-person interview); and unlikely best pal Trevor Diamond, a passionate environmentalist dedicated to saving “the urban fox” from public opprobrium and extinction. The ineffably good-natured and game Horace is a perfect foil in an interlocking series of misadventures that begins when he inadvertently causes the deportation of a Polish shop girl who had caught his fancy, picks up steam when a randy MP (Barnaby Colefax) is caught in flagrante with an accommodating prostitute, and climaxes when the mystery of whether Horace is indeed “the grandson of a famous communist” coincides hilariously with an “anti-quarantine rally” organized to save the foxes and put the duplicitous Barnaby firmly in his place. Without laboring the point, Theroux draws an amusing, touching parallel between the endangered foxes and the almost preternaturally innocent Horace (who is, incidentally and happily, no match for any of the several resourceful and forthright women here).
Despite a slight relaxation of comic tension at the close, a wonderfully intelligent, generously imagined, skillfully executed debut. If its occasionally Waspish observations of human folly bring to mind both Evelyn Waugh and Theroux père, its infectious enthusiasm and warmth announce the appearance of a gifted young writer very much his own man.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-100408-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1999
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
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