AUDREY ROSE

by Frank DeFelitta ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 29, 1975

Exorcist II? Think of it as closer to it than all those others. Although this is far quieter--no obscenities, no profanities, but there's some of the same kind of vehement typewriter-tapping Blatty indulged in, and a story that starts out strong at the beginning. Ivy is the only child of New Yorkers Janice and Bill Templeton whom they guard still more carefully after noticing the stranger who loiters near her school and follows Bill as well. Finally he makes his identity known with a clipping from an old Who's Who--he's Eliot Suggins Hoover who had disappeared--and he claims that Ivy is really his dead daughter Audrey Rose, whose death in a highway accident was coincident with Ivy's birth. Instead of the devil, we have a long advocacy of reincarnation and strange karmasomes with Hare Krishnas humming OMs outside the trial where much of the action takes place, not always to the story's advantage. As for Ivy, with Hoover's reappearance she submits to feverish spells and nightmares of torment and hellfire, shrieks HOTHOTHOTHOT, and finally is put through an hypnotic age regression experiment to determine who she is or was. Not as much of a teeth-chatterer as its predecessor, but the demand has already been autosuggested--sales and the big picture to make sure that we haven't seen the last of her by any means. A HOTHOTHOTHOT property.

Pub Date: Dec. 29, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1975

Categories: FICTION