Readers may see where it’s going, but this droll narrative’s still a witty, boisterous ride.
Rabin’s debut comedy follows two childhood friends and their misadventures in Brazil with a Jesuit priest, a bomb-loving career criminal, and an unassuming Nazi.
Twenty-three-year-old Hart’s new job takes him from a one-bedroom apartment in Westwood, California, to São Paulo. His first day as senior manager for the Maytag Corporation has yet to begin when his best friend, Simon Jovenda, apparently kidnaps him. Simon, who’d grown up with Hart, had left for Brazil some time ago to find his father’s family and catch some Nazis. So Hart’s justifiably baffled when he winds up on a plane with his assistant, Carmen Dos Reis, Simon, and former German army medic/tennis player Raymond Gil. They land and trek through the jungle to meet a couple of Simon’s friends: a priest and a gruff man covered in tattoos. Meanwhile, criminal boss Julian “Shadow” Coelho, fed up with the greed of local mob PCC, implores his convict buddy Carlos Dos Reis to make something more of his life. Carlos teams up with four mobsters—and Shadow supporters—to cause a bit of property damage in São Paulo using homemade bombs. Carlos’ path will ultimately intersect with Hart’s before the younger man can understand his involuntary journey. But even Simon, who claims he’s trying to save Hart, admits that his original plan may have gone off the rails. The author initially structures his novel like a series of vignettes, bouncing around the timeline with myriad characters, including pregnant Manuela Dos Reis. It’s never confusing, though, and consistently entertaining courtesy of Rabin’s humor-laced prose, foreshadowing Hart’s propensity for carsickness and later delivering a revolting but hilarious moment. There are links to the stories, too, before everything comes together at the end, such as repeated references to the upcoming 2016 Olympics in Brazil. Rabin, in fact, so meticulously develops the characters and their backgrounds that the eventual reveals are hardly surprising; in a few instances, they’re almost inevitable. Nonetheless, the book’s practically buzzing with quirky subplots, like Hart’s boss’ seeming obsession with tracking down his employee and the tale of how Hart inadvertently started working for a pornographic film company.
Readers may see where it’s going, but this droll narrative’s still a witty, boisterous ride.Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9970468-1-6
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Ponderosa Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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