A rare and unusual book and a brilliant, mystical exploration of the human spirit.
Doyle (Mink River, 2010, etc.) sets off with Declan O'Donnell, he of "flinty soul" and "salty confidence," sailing along the 45th parallel across the wide Pacific.
In near stream of consciousness, wave upon wave of words tumbles out in long, beautifully rendered, description-packed sentences, running on and on, as Declan, captain of the Plover, "a roomy coffin," skims across water two miles deep and weighing "about eighty quintillion tons." The narrative is rife with allusions, symbolism and metaphor, as Declan first encounters the Tanets, a tramp freighter/pirate ship/smuggler captained by amoral Enrique. Declan next tires of 45th parallel weather, bears south and finds an isolated island. There, he's met by his Oregon friend, Piko, who knew Declan would stop there, even if Declan did not. Beloved wife dead of cancer, Piko boards the Plover with Pipa, his brain-injured, paralyzed daughter, who’s still "sending her large spirit out exploring in ways and realms she has not yet tried to explain." Pipa chirps, whistles and peeps, and birds flock to the little boat. The Plover is again stopped at sea by the Tanets. Enrique needs a navigator and shanghais Piko. Declan follows, rescues Piko, and then finds that Enrique’s mysterious, giant, androgynous crewman, Taromauri, has slipped aboard the Plover. Taromauri is searching for her sea-swallowed daughter. Shadowed by a single gull, "one of the thirteen...one of the shining ones," a spirit of life’s energy focusing on Pipa, the Plover’s crew gains a boy from northern forests; Tungaru is "minister for fisheries and marine resources and foreign affairs," exiled because of his utopian politics. After a fiery confrontation with the Tanets, Declan and company sail "[f]ree as air" on "[t]he continent of the sea."
A rare and unusual book and a brilliant, mystical exploration of the human spirit.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03477-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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