Men will break your heart, but sisterhood is powerful in this uneven but arresting second novel by the author of Locas (1997). That’s sisterhood as a blood relationship, not a political movement, though there are also echos of “brown female power” feminism in Murray’s gritty tale of growing up scandalous in East L.A. For the most part, however, Rita Zapata finds the Mexican-American women in her poverty-stricken neighborhood quick to judge her a putana like her promiscuous mother. It’s Rita’s younger sister, Dolores, who saved her after she accidentally set her hair on fire as a teenager, who claims her heart and her fiercest loyalty—until Billy Navarro shows up. Rita has slept with most of East L.A.’s aspiring boxers (indeed, most of its men, period) in her search for someone on his way up and out who—ll take her with him, and in Billy she finds not only a potential champ but a man who understands her. “You want better than what you got,” he tells Rita, “You got dreams.” For a while Billy seems to fulfill them. He takes her with him on his ascent to a title bout in Las Vegas, and his win gains her some grudging respect from “las girlfriends,” even though they prefer the respectably married Dolores. But identity won through a man can be lost the same way, and Rita hits bottom around about the time Dolores’s political activism indirectly gets her husband killed and riots in 1997 nearly incinerate the Hispanic ghetto. Murray has a sharp eye for the particulars of Mexican-American life, and her prose is juicily vivid. But there’s a fine line between affirming the values of an ethnic subculture and reinforcing its stereotypes; Murray’s hot-mama Latinas and their swaggering men seem perilously close to the latter. Readable and intelligent, though this writer of promise and ferocious energy needs to scrutinize her subject matter a little more deeply.
Pub Date: July 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8021-1642-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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