A stylistically brittle, psychologically intense story of a young man who knows that his time is almost up.
A new translation of a long-lost philosophical novel by the late Jewish Romanian writer Blecher (1909-1938).
The shadow of death falls heavy over this linguistically complex and passionate self-portrait of a young man in early-20th-century Romania who composes an epitaph for his childhood at the same time that he's experiencing it. This new English translation by the late Heim is more focused and contemporary than the versions found freely on the Web and probably gives readers a closer understanding of Blecher’s intent. This volume is also bookended by two excellent essays, written by Andrei Codrescu and Herta Müller, which provide context and some background on the author, who was diagnosed at a young age with spinal tuberculosis, lived most of his life in sanatoriums and died at age 28. On the surface, the novel is nothing more than a running internal dialogue by a boy observing the world around him—imagine a prewar, Eastern European Holden Caulfield filtered through the surreal and frightening lens of Franz Kafka but with considerably more teenage lust. His melancholy is so deep that he identifies moments of “crises,” which a doctor diagnoses as malaria. “In small insignificant objects…I find the melancholy of my childhood and the nostalgia of the futility of a world that engulfed me like a sea with petrified waves,” writes our nameless, hopeless narrator. At the same time, Blecher’s doppelganger is so firmly in the moment that he fetishizes both objects and people, giving women in particular an inherent eroticism that he clearly finds as frightening as he does compelling. It’s a ferocious act of self-awareness that the ailing Blecher was able to dig so deeply into his own psyche to portray the person he believed himself to be.
A stylistically brittle, psychologically intense story of a young man who knows that his time is almost up.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8112-1760-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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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