While the novel should be applauded for its ambitious goals, it falls short of actually achieving most of them.
Merlis’ new novel deals with the tenacity of the past and one woman’s struggle to reconcile her dead husband’s account of their life, their marriage and the death of their son with her own memories.
Living alone in New York in 2003, Martha Ascher is the last of her family. Her husband, renowned author Jonathan Ascher, has been dead for 30 years, and their son, Mickey, died overseas during the Vietnam War. When a hopeful intellectual asks for access to Jonathan’s writings for a biography, Martha finally reads the journals her husband left behind. Much of the novel is taken up by Jonathan’s chronicle of his life from 1964 to ’73, centering on his struggle with his sexuality and encounters with men, as well as an increasingly complicated relationship with Mickey. Through Jonathan, the novel also examines—with varying degrees of success—what it was to be gay during a time of social upheaval. This examination, however, falls into a tedium that extends throughout Jonathan’s journal entries. He's not especially likable, and his shortcomings and personality flaws tend to repel the reader in all-too-familiar ways. Often, the characters are too forthcoming with one another and seem remarkably articulate when it comes to expressing complicated emotions. Even Martha’s narration tends to state emotional facts so bluntly that it eliminates room for complexity. One aspect of the novel that overcomes any shortcomings, however, is its depiction of Mickey. Jonathan and Martha don't know quite how to treat their son—they describe him as “blank” and “inscrutable”—and their fumbling attempts to connect with him are heartbreakingly genuine.
While the novel should be applauded for its ambitious goals, it falls short of actually achieving most of them.Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-299-30350-1
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Univ. of Wisconsin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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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