Miller at her best: engrossing characters and a plot that turns unexpected corners.
In the latest from Miller (The World Below, 2001, etc.), a family member’s death alters the established patterns and rhythms among those who survive.
Eva’s second husband, John, is killed by a car while on a walk with Eva and their three-year-old son, Theo. Eva, who runs a bookstore in California wine country, is understandably devastated. Temporarily unable to cope, she sends Theo and his half-sisters, popular high-school senior Emily and gawky 14-year-old Daisy, to their father, her ex-husband Mark, a winegrower. Mark and Eva’s marriage, full of early passion, had ended when Mark, in a misguided attempt at intimacy, confessed an affair. Eva’s marriage to the older, truly nice John had been calmer, but their love was genuine and deep. The children return to Eva’s house after a few days, but as the months pass, Mark finds himself wooing Eva through the kids, including Theo, for whom he forms quite a lovely attachment. Miller tips the story’s balance by flashing forward occasionally to the adult Daisy’s conversations with her therapist. While her parents flirt and skirt around each other and Emily goes off to college, Daisy, who has always lived in Emily’s shadow, is full of unexpressed depths of grief because John had been the one parent figure she felt really saw her for herself. When Duncan, the physically and emotionally damaged husband of Eva’s best friend, catches her pilfering from the cash register at Eva’s store, he insinuates himself into Daisy’s life. Unaware of her own emerging beauty, Daisy is extremely needy and vulnerable—and extremely angry. A twisted sexual relationship begins. Eva is too wrapped up in her own struggles to notice, but Mark, whom Eva has rebuffed as suitor, steps in and rescues Daisy, who is one tough cookie. The family reshapes itself.
Miller at her best: engrossing characters and a plot that turns unexpected corners.Pub Date: May 2, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4226-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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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