A compact and vivid short novel, unpublished during his lifetime and previously untranslated into English, by the great Portuguese de Queir¢s (18431900) whose essential kinship with Balzac and Flaubert was not recognized until long after his death. An introductory note written in 1925 by the author's son reasons that this lean tale of marital infidelity and thwarted vengeance (it was discovered in a trunk filled with his father's manuscripts) was probably composed between 1877 and 1889 and was intended to form part of de Queir¢s's planned multivolume ``Scenes from Portuguese Life.'' It's the story of Godofredo Alves, a fat, balding businessman who is nevertheless ``something of a romantic'' and whose passions are raised to melodramatic extremes when, upon returning home unexpectedly, he finds his wife in the arms of his business partner. Godofredo plunges into a kaleidoscope of emotions, ranging from suicidal outrage to a chastened acceptance of others', and his own, frailty and foolishness. It's hard to say whether de Queir¢s considered the novella finished when he put it aside, and whether the complacent sense of peace that descends on Godofredo evinces no more than his own romantic myopia. What is certain is that de Queir¢s, one of the underappreciated masters of 19th-century realism, creates an amazing density of character and context in just a few bold strokes. An enormity of information about his protagonist's earlier life, overemotional temperament, and passive suggestibility is conveyed with imperturbable economy. Better still, as Godofredo's passions begin to cool, the very rhythm of the sentences slows and seems to ``breathe,'' as it were, more evenly, as if matching the altered pace of the man's bruised but slowly healing feelings. And in the closing half-dozen pages, we feel the weight of change and growth as they work their way through several inextricably entangled and mutually dependent lives. A slight work given depth and resonance by the indisputable presence of literary genius.
Pub Date: Nov. 29, 1996
ISBN: 0-8112-1399-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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