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TEL AVIV STORIES

Name: TEL AVIV STORIES
Author: Ashley Rindsberg
ISBN: 978-0615422435

LIFE, DEATH, AND LOVE IN ISRAEL'S UNHOLY CITY

by Ashley Rindsberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2011

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In Rindsberg’s debut collection, magical realism joins biblical resonance in seven stories populated largely by Israel’s underclass of beggars and madmen.
“There are many people in Tel Aviv.” Despite this unpromising first line, many of the stories that follow filter that unmanageable mass of citizens down to a handful of homeless outcasts. Four stories are told by an unnamed first-person narrator; like the flâneur protagonist common to W.G. Sebald and Teju Cole, this nameless character wanders the streets of Tel Aviv, reporting on his observations in “that city that looks like a smattering of barnacle spread across the bottom of a boat.” In “Spinoza Street,” he asks a homeless man for his history; the resulting story within a story—of falling in love with a country girl, living in a barn until he seems to become half-goat, taking over her father’s farm and marrying her—creatively blends Old Testament stories and pagan mythology. “White Hair Woman” has a Miss Havisham–like crone, “a witch of the streets, Tel Aviv’s silent sorceress,” holding court at the public library and awaiting messages from the lover who jilted her. Rindsberg’s metaphors are strikingly fresh, as in the witch’s “giant upward-dripping stalactite of hair” and “the old man and his steel-wool wife treated me like a burnt dish.” Of the remaining stories set among Tel Aviv’s street people, the best is “On Allenby,” one of only two third-person narratives. Two beggars, Shlomi and Mendel, compete for handouts until Rabbi Sirkin, visiting from America, invites them to the synagogue to illustrate his sermon on charity. The worshippers give a banquet in the men’s honor, provide them with new clothes and even offer them jobs so they can be self-sufficient—at which point they bolt back to their old lives. It succeeds as a humorous folk tale yet cannily exposes how religiosity is often just for show. The final, novella-length story, “Rivkah and Rebecca,” is another standout in which Aaron, a would-be writer, tells of his enduring love for twin sisters—one of them, it seems, now merely a spirit.
An inventive, empathetic set of character studies.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0615422435

Page Count: 170

Publisher: Midnight Oil Publishers

Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

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NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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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.