Never diffident, Olson (Utah, 1987; The Woman Who Escaped from Shame, 1986; etc.) again boldly mixes philosophy, art theory, and a good bit on the aesthetics of landscape gardeners with a story that more often than not reads like a thriller. It has at its center a heroine, mysterious and beautiful, so we are told, who seems to make a lot of people, more usually women than men, fall irrevocably in love with her. Jack, the narrator, a landscape architect in California, recently beaten up by some thugs, returns to Chicago as executor of his uncle Edward's estate. Staying with his aunt, he begins to sort out Edward's paintings and to read the letters and papers that his aunt, Edward's estranged wife, has kept over the years, many unopened. As Jack reads on, he learns of his uncle's visit to the island of Lesbos, where he had seen a beautiful young woman, Dorit. Back in London, Edward meets up again with Dorit. Using skills developed as an illustrator for medical books, Edward soon becomes successful as a painter, although the surface of his pictures is merely covering for intricate drawings, and even hidden messages. One picture eerily prefigures a strange encounter Jack has while driving just outside Chicago. Another commands "find Angela," Edward's long-lost daughter. Jack's attempts to trace Dorit lead to the murder of two of her friends and the violent death of an art curator Jack had consulted about the value of the paintings. The plot twists and turns, as Jack returns to California, hides on the yacht of Dorit's former husband, escapes from the yacht in Panama, only to rejoin it as it sails to Lesbos, where all is explained, not necessarily satisfactorily. Olson writes with verve, even brilliance, and the plot here is often quite enthralling, but the discursiveness and ultimately the sheer improbability of his story detract from his considerable talents. Fascinating but flawed.
Pub Date: March 1, 1990
ISBN: 0671684868
Page Count: 442
Publisher: Linden/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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
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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