Violent, fast, mean, funny, and thoroughly satisfying.
Dinner with his gorgeous ex-girlfriend in an of-the-moment restaurant is made epically memorable for a London screenwriter when an executioner pops in and wipes out the date—and nearly finishes off the writer, who, badly banged-up, carries an understandable grudge.
It was Lily who made the date with Conrad Redman. Lovely Lily. Lily the almost-actress. Lily the star of the adverts. Who six weeks ago kicked Conrad out of her life and her excellent apartment. And here she’s cocked her finger for Conrad to fill in at dinner when she’s stood up by her first choice. And Conrad, who still carries a torch, comes running. No shame. And precious little money for the very expensive dinner just ordered that won’t be enjoyed, thank you, because a gent in cyclist-delivery spandex has walked in and sprayed Lily dead with an automatic pistol, and got several rounds into Conrad, who wakes up weeks later to find himself in rehab with a lot of questions. And some money. It turns out Lily hadn’t got around to changing her will, so Conrad’s got her savings and that very desirable apartment. As he rebuilds his badly wasted body, Conrad learns that the gunman is in custody, but that nobody—not his mother, not his long-suffering social worker, not Lily’s unspeakable parents, and absolutely nobody official—will tell him anything about the assassin or the circumstances that so rudely interrupted Lily and Conrad’s last supper. As curious as he is irritated, Conrad goes digging. His wheelchair-and-taxi odyssey, shadowed by all sorts of heavies, will take him into a pathology lab, the city’s theatrical and underworlds, and (most frightening) the world of the tabloids, and will nearly get him killed all over again. He will learn that Lily was pregnant and that he was not the only one enjoying her favors when he was still enjoying them. Some of the most satisfying moments in Conrad’s battle for the truth occur when the Royal Shakespeare Company takes heavy blows.
Violent, fast, mean, funny, and thoroughly satisfying.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7145-3068-9
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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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