In this darkly funny scuttle through academe's more covert passageways, Davies—a veteran provider of civil entertainments who's ever Jung-at-heart—first edges his people into medieval archetypes and unexpected passions, then caps the Scholarly spectacle with a splendidly horrid murder. Remote in his eyrie at the Canadian "College of St. John and the Holy Ghost" (known as "Spook"), austere medievalist Clement Hollier is oblivious to the adoration of a lovely grad student: half-gypsy Maria Theotky. (Though once, inexplicably, he "had" her on the sofa.) And Maria's narration alternates with that of Anglican priest/professor Simon Darcourt, who, along with Hollier, is one of Maria's "rebel angels"— those who "taught the daughters of men" after being exiled from Heaven. But she is also fascinated by the verbal stilettos of newly-arrived "Brother John" Pariabane: a Spook alumnus and self-de-frocked monk, a brilliant Doctor of Philosophy, an "important bum. . . a cultivated sponger," a bamboozler and mocking asp. So, while Darcourt chronicles academic monstrosities (including the prize-winning work of a modern alchemist working with human excrement) and Hollier boils with rage at nasty Renaissance scholar Urky McVarish (who has stolen a priceless Rabelais ms.), passions and jealousies brew. Soon there are even exotic visits to Maria's gypsy mother—as Hollier requests curses and Darcourt pants with love for Maria (due to a misdirected love potion). And finally: Parlabane, in a cloud of sulphurous malefactions, wipes Urky and himself from the Earth; Simon comes to his senses; Hollier recognizes love too late; and Maria settles for true love with a nice young rich man. Along the way Davies teases the modern scholars' "conventionality," playfully casting back to the saucy scholars of old. And though for rather a special audience, this is saucy stuff indeed—swept with vaporous invention and fertile with miraculous minnows of donnish wit.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1981
ISBN: 0140062718
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1981
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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