Ball embroiders the record outlandishly, but what a ripping way to learn a history lesson.
An atmospheric tale of the mythmaking of a young queen.
Ball (Acorna’s Quest, 1998, with Anne McCaffrey) concentrates on Eleanor’s formative years in this densely detailed narrative, from age 15, in 1137, when her powerful father William died, leaving her and her younger sister vulnerable to predatory suitors, to age 30, when she manages to divorce the ineffectual King Louis of France and marry the young upstart of England, soon-to-be Henry II. Ball portrays Eleanor as a strong-willed, decisive character, who essentially chooses her own destiny as queen. “Love is for peasants,” she proclaims. “We make alliances.” With the death of her father, Eleanor eschews the marriage offer of a lesser noble and puts forth to her advisers the scheme of catching bigger fish, Louis the Fat’s son, and thus uniting the valuable lands of Aquitaine and Poitiers with France. Indeed, young Louis, who wanted only to spend his days in pious prayer in a monastery, but was yanked into line when his older brother Philippe was killed, reluctantly takes the lively teenager as his wife before growing to love her. Soon he is crowned king, and Eleanor his queen, and over many years two daughters are born, but no sons. As rumors of Eleanor’s adultery spread (she finds Louis a cold fish), she is coerced into joining Louis’s disastrous venture to the Holy Land to fight the infidels; Ball digresses on a truly fanciful venture with the queen’s extended entourage to Constantinople and the lush spectacle of Emperor Manuel’s court, where she learns for the first time in his arms “what sweetness could be between a man and a woman.” A meeting with impetuous, red-headed Henry, the teenaged son of King Geoffrey of England, whets the empire-making ambitions for both Henry and Eleanor, and their match is secretly sealed. The author here delivers several imperious, memorable characterizations.
Ball embroiders the record outlandishly, but what a ripping way to learn a history lesson.Pub Date: June 13, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-20533-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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