Redolent of atmosphere and narrated in an old-fashioned leisurely voice rarely heard nowadays: a story of the first...
An eerie, atmospheric account of a drifter who wanders into a remote French village, disappears, and comes to haunt the lives of the local inhabitants, in a sequel to The Murdered House (2000, not reviewed) from celebrated Provençal novelist Magnan.
The hilltown of Lurs is the kind of place where strangers are noticed—especially strangers as odd as Séraphin Monge, who stumbled into the village café one cold night in 1921. Silent, shy, and mysterious, Séraphin says little about himself but admits he’s an orphan who’s left home and has no clear destination ahead. Eager to make a little money, Séraphin agrees to fell some trees for a local farmer, but after only a few days he’s buried in a mudslide and given up for dead. His story might have ended there but for the fact that three townswomen had already fallen in love with him: Auphanie Brunel (who runs the café), Marie Dormeur (the baker’s daughter), and Rose Sepulcre (who owns a small factory nearby) are all determined that Séraphin’s body be recovered and given a Christian burial. They prevail upon Antoine (the factory foreman) to undertake the dangerous task of dredging the quagmire. Once Séraphin has been decently entombed, however, he finds little rest—for an odd series of miracles begin to take place at his grave. Marie’s blind son recovers his sight, the butcher’s disfigured boy is cured, and the village atheist converts and enters a monastery. The parish priest is dubious, and his bishop (fearing hysteria or fraud) is frankly hostile to the cult that has sprung up—so they secretly take action to nip the devotion in the bud. But there are also stories circulating of people who’ve seen Séraphin walking about long after he was supposed to have been buried in the mud. Is he a ghost? Or is he, in fact, still alive? Maybe this is one of those weird incidents that eventually turns into a legend—or maybe it’s something else altogether.
Redolent of atmosphere and narrated in an old-fashioned leisurely voice rarely heard nowadays: a story of the first rank—intriguing, exotic, and extremely strange.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-86046-739-3
Page Count: 394
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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