Fifth Business (1970) reintroduced Mr. Davies after more than ten years to a very appreciative audience and some of the same characters appear here although the two novels are quite independent. Davies is a thoughtful, tasteful mediator in human affairs and while the earlier book was concerned with "moral bookkeeping," the audit here is psychoanalytical, attempting to release the submerged life of feeling of a rigid rationalist. He's David Staunton, a most successful Toronto lawyer, who suddenly finds he's lost control of himself in a theater shouting "Who killed Boy Staunton" — his father. Staunton senior had been found in his car at the bottom of a harbor with a stone in his mouth — pink granite. After this showy beginning calculated to arrest your attention, Staunton goes to the Jung Institute in Zurich where under the quiet Johanna von Haller he undertakes a Jungian analysis. Dr. von Haller keeps the Jungian cabalism to a minimum although you will be inducted from anima to persona to archetype (the manticore) while Staunton is forced to reconstruct/revise his relationships — primarily the lack of them — with his father, the non-existent women in his life, and his mother whom he was led to suspect had an affair with Dunstan Ramsay (a principal character in the previous book). The last inset which leaves David Staunton still uncommitted and which has also featured some startling circumstantialities suggests that this account may be resumed, if only to determine whether David will continue to live only the half life of the mind (esse in lntellectu solo). One questions whether all readers of the earlier book will be as comfortable in the penumbra of the collective unconscious; still Davies is a donnish, civilized and discreet guide. He also returns the novel to its primary domain so that it serves its resident characters on the level of insight rather than sensation.
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1972
ISBN: 014303913X
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1972
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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