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ON THE SICKLE'S EDGE

Name: ON THE SICKLE'S EDGE
Author: Neville D. Frankel
ISBN: 978-1-944884-10-9

by Neville D. Frankel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2017

An unwieldy epic spans generations and continents while remaining, at its core, somehow improbable.

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Set mostly in the Soviet Union, this ambitious novel takes on memory, identity, and family ties.

Frankel’s (Bloodlines, 2012) third novel is a multigenerational epic that spans three continents and almost three times as many decades. It begins with one man’s impossible decision: Isaak Shtein, a Jewish Latvian refugee in South Africa, has lost his wife. He has five children. He decides to return to Latvia for help from his family. He can afford to bring with him all but two teenage sons; he plans to return to them before long. Unfortunately, World War I begins soon after Isaak arrives in Latvia. He marries his late brother’s wife and the two flee, with their combined children, to Russia. Then they make another hard decision: they’ll hide their Jewish identity and hope for a better life. The first portion of Frankel’s behemoth is narrated by Lena, Isaak’s only surviving daughter, who grows up in Stalinist Moscow, making a life for herself amid the limitations and paranoia of that society. Lena’s granddaughter, Darya, narrates the second part of the book; by marrying a cruel, sadistic man in the upper echelons of the KGB, she has endangered herself, her children, and her extended family. That’s where Steven comes in. Steven Green, the third narrator, is a descendant of one of the sons Isaak Shtein left, decades ago, in South Africa. Now a painter living in Boston, Steven has begun writing letters to his Soviet relatives. When he goes to visit them, he falls in love with Darya and, soon after, is entangled in a plot of intrigue and violence that has him in way over his head. Frankel is an engaging storyteller, and his depictions of Soviet life are interesting. But his characters are two-dimensional and his efforts to complicate them seem trite. The dialogue, which features Russian speakers spouting American idioms, is unconvincing. Worse, most of the book’s action is simply summarized, while many of the scenes he does allow us to glimpse are mundane and sometimes repetitive. A heavy round of editing may have helped but as it stands, the book is overstuffed and the ending unlikely.

An unwieldy epic spans generations and continents while remaining, at its core, somehow improbable.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-944884-10-9

Page Count: 471

Publisher: Dialogos

Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.