While her special son-in-law undergoes brain surgery, a retired farmer and beekeeper recalls her life of hardship and denial in western Canada, with a few honeyed moments mixed in. A memorable follow-up to the equally atmospheric The Cure for Death by Lightning (1996). There isn’t much Augusta doesn’t know about bees—her mother was a beekeeper and she’s been one herself as well. But between those calming periods of hives and swarms, Augusta has had her fair share of ups and downs—which, during her beekeeping son-in-law Gabe’s seemingly endless operation, she has time to review. Teenage Augusta’s second sight had already shown her that her mother, Helen, would die in childbirth. After this, Augusta accepts the red-faced, awkward advances of an older neighbor, Karl, and moves as his bride to his father’s house and sheep farm. There she suffers her husband’s naãvetÇ and his father’s outright contempt until her headstrong nature rebels: Her first acts of defiance, weekly fly-fishing trips with her minister, give way to day jobs in the closest big town, then to a brazen, passionate affair with a big man she knows only as Joe. Gossip forces her to stop what she’d started, but Augusta’s return to the sheep farm is temporary. At her father’s death, which follows the birth of her daughter, Joy, she inherits the family place and settles there with Karl; long, hardscrabble years later, with Joy herself a headstrong teenager, Augusta again revolts and bolts, although this time returns home to discover solace, as her mother did, in the company of bees. With their help she finally finds a place in her wild heart for her dull yet adoring husband, and the renewed will to keep her precious secret. Too many time shifts between Augusta old and young, perhaps, but nonetheless there’s a wonderful vitality to her, and to the rich, buzzing lore she inherits and makes her own.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60451-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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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