A beach read for strong-willed, independent souls.
Who can help two young women escape the gravitational pull of their hometown? Can they rely on each other, or will they have to separate and trust others?
Avallone’s debut novel tells an uneasy coming-of-age story. On the cusp of 14, on the cusp of young womanhood, best friends Anna and Francesca delight in their changing bodies. And so do all the men in town. Whether flaunting their assets in bikinis, sneaking into cabanas with boys, or performing a daily morning striptease, the girls revel in drawing as much attention to themselves as possible. Indeed, Avallone’s imagery incessantly sexualizes everything from the girls’ bodies to the machinery of the steel mills. Yet, as Francesca’s father and Anna’s older brother worry about the girls’ provocative behavior, they also struggle against economic disparity. Their own crowded shores of Piombino are littered with trash and drugs, while opposite, the pristinely white beaches of Elba beckon. Anna and Francesca will soon have to choose: work in the steel mills, marry a steel worker, or somehow escape to Elba. Staying in Piombino holds little attraction, particularly given the models of their own parents’ marriages: Francesca’s father is an abusive drunkard while Anna’s is a con artist, yet neither mother seems able to leave. Soon a complex constellation of adolescent pressures pushes the girls apart. Anna explores a relationship with her older brother’s friend, Mattia. Francesca becomes drawn into the vortex of the darker underbelly of Piombina, including fake girlfriends, lascivious older men and degrading behavior. A chance meeting on Corso Italia, however, forces the girls to realize that they belong together. Yet how can they shed the false friends, bad influences and familial troubles? How can they find their way back to each other and the dreams they shared at the beginning of the summer?
A beach read for strong-willed, independent souls.Pub Date: June 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02358-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
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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