A generally engaging addition to the expanding library of historical fiction.
Debut Canadian novelist Cameron, inspired by stories from her grandparents and uncles, pays homage to the early settlers of Ontario’s northern territory.
This novel celebrates the strength of ordinary people in the face of extraordinary circumstances. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Canadian government, anxious to develop the northern reaches of its Ontario province, began selling cheap acreage to those willing to homestead, clear the vast forests of a rather unforgiving, lonely terrain, and work in the mineral-rich mines in the north. In England, Annie Larsen Kidd’s husband, Jim, sees this as the opportunity they’ve been seeking—a way for the financially struggling young family to finally secure their own home and provide a future for their children: “Listen to this!” he says. “Ye can buy land fo’ fifty cents an acre and just pay a quarter of the price in cash.” Reluctantly, Annie packs up her three children and follows him to New Ontario, where she discovers that he’s built them a rustic, two-room log cabin; their nearest neighbor is a couple of miles away. Thus begins a prototypical immigrant tale of poverty, frustration, and perseverance. Cameron’s focus is on the details of Annie’s daily life: the milestones (including two more births) and the more mundane, repetitive chores. Although the story is light on action, and Annie is the only three-dimensional character, Cameron’s simple, third-person narrative works well to bring readers into the long-lost moments of a past century. There are some compelling sections, when the major events of the era wreak havoc on the small, isolated village; Cameron depicts a devastating forest fire, World War I, and a lethal outbreak of Spanish Flu through graphic imagery, as in this description of Jim’s arrival at the front line in France: “The fields around them were littered with corpses and decomposing body parts; the dead left to decompose where they fell.” In the “Author’s Notes,” Cameron says, “I wanted to put flesh on the bones of those early pioneers and let them live again.” In this, she succeeds.
A generally engaging addition to the expanding library of historical fiction.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-77180-154-6
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Iguana Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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