Puzo's seventh novel, a monstrously gripping quasisequel to 1969's The Godfather, flavors itself with none of the Corleones so dear to fans of that earlier potboiler but does simmer the same Sicilian marinara, using a more literate recipe. From its Long Island compound, the Clericuzio family, ruled by the twistedly wise Great White Shark Domenico Clericuzio, dominates the nation's Mafia but longs to go legit. For over 30 years, old Domenico has urged the Clericuzios toward fading namelessly into the nation's fabric, into restaurants, construction companies, and legalized gambling. He has given up drugs as operationally too unwieldy, and now seeks nationwide legalized gambling. Peace has reigned since Domenico's young nephew, Pippi De Lena, wiped out the brutal Santadio family in one bloody evening. But Sicilian vengeance knows no time limit, and one shadowy figure remains of mixed Santadio-Clericuzio blood who now seeks payment and rulership of the Clericuzios. Puzo divides his novel mainly into scenes set on Long Island, in Las Vegas, and Hollywood. Pippi runs Xanadu, the crown jewel of Las Vegas casinos, aided by his son Croccifixio, known as Cross. When Cross finds himself stunned by the beauty of Hollywood's leading actress, Athena Aquitane, he decides to help quell her fear of her acid-slinging ex-husband. Athena departs LoddStone Studios, where she's filming the $100M epic Messalina, and goes into hiding until the threat is removed. To get his foot into the legit film industry, Cross buys the unfinished picture from Loddstone, and quickly, permanently resolves Athena's marital problems. After his father Pippi is murdered, Cross sets out to avenge him. But Cross's instincts tell him that old Domenico may be behind his own nephew's murder. Cross, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, may have to go against his own blood if he is to have revenge. Fabulously well-plotted; drunk on luxury.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-40143-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996
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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