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THE NAMES OF THE DEAD

Name: THE NAMES OF THE DEAD
Author: Stewart O’Nan
ISBN: 0-385-48192-6

by Stewart O’Nan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1996

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The author of the prizewinning Snow Angels (1994) offers a clever reformulation of a frequently exhausted theme—a shell- shocked Vietnam vet finds that his real troubles begin long after he returns safely home. Larry Markham is one of those characters who could be said to have found their rut. A Cornell grad who went to Vietnam over his father's objections, he's settled back into daily life in Ithaca, where (more than ten years after his return from combat) he drives a delivery truck and volunteers as a therapist at the local VA hospital. Markham was a medic in Vietnam, and his obsession with the war and the lives he saw destroyed by it now stands as a barrier between him and anyone who didn't share his experience: His wife Vicki complains that ``It's like a religion with you. . . . You keep torturing yourself with it. That's what your group at the hospital's all about—keeping it fresh.'' Even when Vicki leaves Markham for another man, he doesn't seem able to make the connection between his inability to get over the war and his failure as a husband. Instead, he begins an affair with his wife's best friend—herself abandoned by her husband—whose mental instability has kept her as emotionally isolated as Markham himself. But before any resolution to his domestic turmoil appears, Markham finds himself threatened on another side—by a patient who becomes convinced that Markham's father was responsible for his mother's death and sets out to kill him and Markham both. The intricacy of the plot—most of the characters have some secret and usually malign link with others that only gradually becomes apparent—could easily have become far-fetched or predictable, but O'Nan orchestrates the proceedings well by providing a parallel narrative of Markham's experience in Vietnam and by refusing to settle all the questions in the end. A credible and moving account of moral failure and regeneration: thrilling, mature, and thoughtful.

Pub Date: March 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-385-48192-6

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
CITY OF SECRETS
by Stewart O’Nan

- BOOK REVIEW
WEST OF SUNSET
by Stewart O’Nan

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ODDS
by Stewart O’Nan

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.