From poet and novelist Engle (Singing at Cuba, 1993, not reviewed): another lyrical and joyous affirmation of the human spirit's ability to subvert and survive—this one as much a history of Cuba as of one family's long fight for justice. ``The heart of the island,'' the story's young narrator asserts, ``is a magnet, enormous and powerful, pulling me back through time and space, pulling me in and down, swirling [in] the eye of the hurricane.'' And, in 1993, when Carmen Peregr°n visits Cuba and meets half-brother Camilo for the first time, she irrevocably enters the eye of that hurricane. Her father, a famous Cuban revolutionary who had been assassinated before either of his children were born, had married two women. One was Marisol, now a high-level functionary in Cuba's government; the other was the American mother of Carmen, a would-be revolutionary who returned to the States and spent her life traveling with her daughter and selling ancient artifacts. Now, this mother's death in a recent hang-gliding accident has impelled Carmen to meet Camilo, with whom she's corresponded since childhood. Their meeting is brief but significant as Camilo, entrusting Carmen with a package of documents not to be opened until she's back in the US, immediately sets off on a raft for Florida. When he's discovered and later imprisoned in Cuba, Carmen returns home and dedicates herself to freeing him. Along the way she learns of Castro's role in her father's death and uncovers family secrets going back to Spain 500 before. Camilo is eventually released; Carmen marries botanist Alec; and the reunited family regularly gets together even in the future—the story ends in the year 2033 in a now-free Cuba. All these events are enhanced by lapidary evocations of nature, and an urgent, compelling love for family, land, and freedom. A remarkable work—and significant contribution—that seeks to understand the ravages wrought by oppressors past and present.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-09987-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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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