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INCUBUS

Name: INCUBUS
Author: Ann Arensberg
ISBN: 0-394-55696-8

by Ann Arensberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1999

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The territory that was long ago ceded to Stephen King—ghostly goings-on in rural Maine—is entered to stunning effect in this absorbing tale of demonic possession, by the author of Sister Wolf (1980) and Group Sex (1986). Pragmatic and “sensible” Cora Whitman, wife of Episcopal priest Henry Lieber, tells in retrospect the story of Henry’s ministry in the town of Dry Falls, in south-central Maine, during the summer of 1974, when a killing heat wave and drought presage a frightening reversal of the natural order. Farm animals bear deformed offspring. A woman known to believe in the occult unaccountably “loses” part of a day. Two boarding-school girls playing at “witchcraft” see a mysterious figure lurking in a graveyard; “six girls” attending the same school are “discovered prostrate on their dormitory beds, naked and stupefied.” A nude sunbather is attended by a large black dog that appears as if from nowhere. Husbands inexplicably take sexual leave of their wives; then, as suddenly, become sexually insatiable. And, despite her tartly declared “low threshold of tolerance for anything mysterious,” Cora herself is “visited” by a presence whose shape and substance Arensberg teasingly discloses in a beautifully paced sequence of disturbingly hallucinatory scenes. But this is much more than a horror story. Henry Lieber’s “calling” to serve God is itself an unexplained phenomenon, as is the sudden aridity that afflicts his marriage. Both he and Cora are fully imagined, complex characters, and Arensberg’s unflinching analyses of their vacillating mutual understanding and intimacy, as well as of Cora’s tense relationships with her troubled mother Emily and sister Hannah, imbue this vivid story with an overlay of psychological realism that makes its (genuinely) supernatural dimension all the more horrific and threatening. As much as it transcends its genre, this is nonetheless one of the finest contemporary novels of the supernatural—the best since Clive Barker’s The Damnation Game. (Book-of-the-Month selection)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-394-55696-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.