As ever, the finest horror collection going, with no leaning on hackwork.
Horrormeister Jones defends his collections against Internet carpings that he favors British writers in his horror annual. While two thirds of the present one is British, that’s not the usual balance. And much British material was first published in the US, while other stuff was taken from e-books and small press publications.
The 72-page introduction is astounding, a survey of the horror field for the past year that covers every nook and cranny, from George Lucas’s $400 million earnings to Stephen King’s e-book flop with The Plant to his new $40 million three-book contract with Simon & Schuster, and $65 million earnings, to J. K. Rowlings’s $42 million rake in and the failed plagiarism suit against her. Jones goes deep underground as well, assisted by Kim Newman, in rounding up the dead for the collection’s 40-page annual necrology: farewell Curt Siodmak (age 98), scripter of Universal’s The Wolf Man and dozens of other horror flicks, goodbye Robert Cormier and L. Sprague de Camp, adieu John Gielgud of Frankenstein: The True Story, and a deep bow to stage actor/director Stuart Lancaster (Batman Returns, as well as the lead in Hamlet for a Little Theatre production in which the present reviewer played Bernardo 45 years ago). Top choices herein include two excerpts from Kim Newman’s coming fourth Anno Dracula volume, Johnny Alucard, a film noir piece. In “Castle in the Desert,” a detective meets a 550-year-old lady vampire who tells him about Noah Cross (the John Huston character in Chinatown) moving all the stones of Manderley to the desert in 1920, while in Newman’s “The Other Side of Midnight,” a hymn to Orson Welles and his unfinished “The Other Side of the Wind,” Welles is filming the last days of Dracula, with John Huston as the lead. Also on hand: Thomas Ligotti, Ramsey Campbell, Kathe Koja.
As ever, the finest horror collection going, with no leaning on hackwork.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0919-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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