Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis.
A humanitarian doctor becomes embroiled in the Rwandan genocide.
Schafer (A Different Kind of Fire, 2018), “a retired family-practice physician,” plumbs the depths of the genocide in Rwanda with this rousing novel that follows Dr. Jessica Hemings, whose volunteer medical mission to the country in 1991 carries life-threatening danger. The story opens as Hemings races through the mountainous forests of Rwanda and Tanzania after her Kirehe clinic is ambushed by a vicious militia. In Rwanda, she horrifyingly views the slaughtered bodies of innocent villagers and vows justice. Running alongside this main narrative are the escapades of Parisian war correspondent Michel Fournier, who is assigned to cover the ethnic discord in Rwanda, a place he’s never visited. He has not experienced the volatile political climate there between the Hutu and Tutsi populations. Also featured is Hemings’ still-smitten ex, Tom, who discovers she has vanished in Africa. Not for the faint of heart, Schafer’s descriptions are graphic and as real as the political strife and civil war that played out in East Africa. Equally crisp is her storytelling as the narrative flashes back to Hemings’ uneasy arrival in Rwanda and her ensuing culture clash and political education, reflecting that “there was no escape from racism, even when only one race was involved.” After she notices the clinic’s lead physician, Dr. Cyprien Gatera, becoming neglectful to Tutsi patients, he is exposed as a Hutu radical and assaults and rapes Hemings, claiming her as his own. She escapes and remains on the run for weeks, as depicted in the novel's beginning, until reaching a Tanzanian refugee camp where she aids the ill and ultimately makes a decision to place herself in lethal danger again to save others. Though the book is lengthy and teeming with exacting, grim details, the story moves swiftly, portraying Hemings’ interactions with Fournier that become intimate. They empower her with the fortification to return to Africa after resettling in Philadelphia and concoct a reckless revenge plot against Gatera. There’s plenty of sharp, suspenseful action to savor here in this impressively poignant, hauntingly realistic, and searingly moving tale. Schafer intensively explores themes of racism, violence, war, and human welfare.
Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64316-597-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Waldorf Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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