A major rediscovery, arguably comparable to those of Bruno Schulz, Leo Perutz, and Joseph Roth. A small, beautifully...
The first English translation of a brooding, densely atmospheric, forgotten 1942 novel whose eminent Hungarian expatriate author (b. 1900) committed suicide, while living in the US, in his 89th year.
It’s set in the late 1930s at a remote castle near the Carpathian Mountains, where a retired general prepares to receive a visit from a former comrade in arms, whom he hasn’t seen in more than 40 years. A lengthy prelude hints at a scandal of long duration, introduces the sibylline figure of Henrik’s (i.e., the general’s) elderly nursemaid, and dredges up memories of Henrik’s privileged boyhood, successful military career and outwardly successful marriage, and conflicted longtime closeness (“Ours was a friendship out of the ancient sagas”) with Konrad (the expected visitor), the companion of his youth, and, it is hinted, the destroyer of Henrik’s happiness. Konrad arrives; the two old men greet each other cordially, dine, then sit together as Henrik pours out an increasingly tense tale of the unequal comradeship of a boy born to great wealth and another whose career was fed by his family’s sacrifices; of Henrik’s marriage to delicate, musically inclined Krisztina and the “story à trois” created by her increasing intimacy with the introverted, similarly gifted Konrad; and of a climactic day in their common history—that of a stag hunt, following which Konrad immediately resigned his commission and departed for the tropics, and Henrik and Krisztina began living apart, never to speak or meet again during her brief lifetime. Márai communicates these judiciously staggered revelations in a carefully wrought epigrammatic style (filled with complex extended metaphors) that’s a bit reminiscent of early Thomas Mann. The end result is a mesmerizing dramatization of the tensions between culture and militarism, tradition and impulse, which captures in a perfectly controlled larger metaphor the vanity and rigidity of an old order threatened by unrestraint and passion and destined to flare up and destroy itself, leaving only “embers” behind.
A major rediscovery, arguably comparable to those of Bruno Schulz, Leo Perutz, and Joseph Roth. A small, beautifully fashioned masterpiece.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-40756-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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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