A biotechnical breakthrough throws two brothers into conflict in this high-tech thriller set in a "science court" in the nation's capital. Bova is best known for science fiction (Orion Among the Stars, 1995, etc.) that displays an unusual awareness of the role of politics in the scientific process. Here, he adapts that awareness to his second contemporary suspenser (after Death Dream, 1994), this involving one Arthur Marschak, head of Grenford biotechnical lab, where a genetic technique for allowing the body to regenerate injured or diseased organs has been discovered. Grenford has become the target of fundamentalist protestors, who believe that Arthur's breakthrough would disrupt God's plan; at the same time, Arthur's brother Jesse, a surgeon who has won humanitarian awards for his work among the poor in a Bronx hospital, opposes the life-extending treatment on the grounds that only the very rich will be able to afford it. The conflict is exacerbated by the fact that Jesse's wife, Julia, broke an engagement to Arthur to marry the doctor; and by Jesse's workaholic neglect of their dying mother. Meanwhile, the corporate ownership of Grenford is trying to fight a hostile takeover and is considering selling off the lab as a means of raising money, while at the same time Arthur convinces friends in Washington to convene a science court where the merits of his technique can be decided from scientific evidence alone. (Much of the novel consists of sensational testimony that, to Arthur's disgust, has nothing to do with the issues.) In the end, the good scientists win a victory of sorts, and the brothers achieve a reconciliation—hardly a surprise, but there's plenty of excitement along the way. An effective mix of science, politics, and family struggle in a novel that should reach a wide audience.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 055357356X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
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
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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