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Purging Purgatory

A GHOST STORY

Taut tale of people battling ghosts — those from a haunted past as well as the phantom kind.

Mendoza, Roger

PURGING PURGATORY: A GHOST STORY In Mendoza’s (The E.B. Roberts Chronicles, 2016, etc.) thriller, a Texas family capable of interacting with lost souls is tormented by something much darker. Eight-year-old Tommy Danvers’ good friend, Thomas, is a ghost, but the boy’s ability to see spirits isn’t unique to his lineage. Grandmother Dorothy was once a medium to the rich and famous before giving it up, after the tragedy of losing her husband, who died trying to kill someone else, and her son to suicide. She still helps souls in Purgatory when they ask but doesn’t want the family trait for daughter Catherine (Tommy’s mom), whom Dorothy had institutionalized and whose ghost-seeing is stifled by anti-hallucinogenic drugs. Dorothy’s likewise afraid that Tommy is too young to distinguish a Purgatory soul from a demon. When the boy’s estranged and terminal billionaire father, Gregory Prescott, wants to see his son, Catherine and Tommy drive to Austin but find evil awaiting them. The two manage to escape, only to end up in an accident, putting Catherine in a facility for mandatory therapy, on account of the apparently addictive drug she’s taking and the drinks she’d had before driving with Tommy. The evil, however, may have followed her home, where the Danverses will have to face a darkness bent on their collective demise. Mendoza’s muted ghost story has a few spooky turns but primarily centers on the family’s tortured history. Catherine, for starters, has a good reason to despise the priest that Dorothy trusts, and the deaths of the Danvers father and son are an essential element to the plot, especially as details gradually come to light. The supernatural parts are certainly absorbing, like teasing Tommy’s power, which becomes abundantly clear during the inevitable and riveting confrontation. An impressive pace keeps the book moving, even during Catherine’s therapy sessions, thanks to short paragraphs (a few sentences or less) and brief chapters. Sparse particulars regarding Tommy often work — he recognizes evil simply as shadows or black smoke. But Tommy’s suggestion that he knows when most people will die is a rather daunting concept unfortunately left unexplored.

Taut tale of people battling ghosts — those from a haunted past as well as the phantom kind.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-938962-19-6

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2016

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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

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THE ALCHEMIST

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

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