Sort of lags after the first few hundred amputations.
Two Mongol lads become leaders of their universe in a relentlessly serious saga about Genghis Khan.
If there’s anyone left in the civilized world who has any doubt that central Asia is one of those places best left to the central Asians, let him spend several days of his effete Western life curled up with this hymn to 13th-century life on the steppe. Dripping with blood (much of it drunk, some mingled, most soaking the ground under the pounding hooves of Mongol chargers), thick with research (everyone wears a del rather than a cloak and drinks airag rather than fermented mare’s milk), and chockablock with widescreen imagery (grass, grass, grass), this is the tale of Bo’urchu, the most loyal friend an ambitious landless nomad could ask for, and Temujin, the nomad in need of such a loyal friend. Charismatic Temujin, eventually to be Genghis Khan, burns to redress the humiliation of his family; Bo’urchu pretty much wants to lead a nice life, zooming around the steppe on the best horse in the world. Having the less pressing agenda, Bo’urchu spends the rest of his days following Temujin in and around Mongolia, administering ritual humiliation, beheading, enjoying a bender now and then, raping, uniting tribes, and ultimately putting together a nation capable of going to war against the big dogs, China and the West. Temujin gets all the girls, and there are plenty. He especially gets the ones that his blood brother Bo’urchu fancies. Temujin fathers many sons, Bo’urchu doesn’t. There are rewards for loyal chums, though. There’s plenty of booty—the old fashioned kind—and lots of hunting. And, whenever there’s occasion to celebrate, everybody settles in and tears apart a nice sheep to eat, raw if necessary. Gourmands will enjoy the recipe for barbecued whole marmot, which suggests inserting a hot rock into the wee rodent. Oh, and by the way, the women love the life as much as the men. Honest.
Sort of lags after the first few hundred amputations.Pub Date: April 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30965-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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