Polished first novel toying with the possibility that dead souls are all around us, ``broadcasting'' at weak radio frequencies. That, at least, is Zuravleff's premise, but actually her story is mostly about George Mahoney, an engineer working for a company called Coldpoint. George is a walking dead man. He has labored for 14 years on ``improvements'' for refrigerators—his triumph having been the first ice maker—but now he spends all of his time fending off his foulmouthed boss and trying to avoid the ``Veteran,'' his taciturn, burnt-out officemate. And there's trouble at home: a meticulously organized, fiercely middle-class wife who seems increasingly rigid and unimaginative, and a troubled young son who is either brilliant or disturbed. The Veteran is forced into retirement, and a homely engineer with a hearing aid, Niagara Spense, takes his place. Niagara could excel in academic life except that she'd be labeled a crackpot, since her research involves using old radios to listen in on the dead. George falls in love with her, but he merely bemuses her since she's fallen for the Veteran's son, a rock musician who also seeks to commune with the dead. Jealous George breaks into Niagara's home and, bent on sabotage, accidentally tunes in his dead mother. What she says is so startling that George's life flops over completely: He sheds the guilt his mother long ago imposed, realizes how foolish an affair with Niagara would be, and, after his son wins the science fair with an ingenious refrigeration project, comes up with the best idea he's had in years. Zuravleff backs off from her dead souls theme just when it becomes interesting. Nonetheless, her narrative offers a wry and original meditation on office politics, midlife crisis, and even mortality. Thumbs most of the way up.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-374-15851-7
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
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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