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CAMBRIDGE

Name: CAMBRIDGE
Author: Caryl Phillips
ISBN: 0-679-40532-1

by Caryl Phillips ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 1992

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A further exploration of slavery and the African diaspora by West Indian-born and British-reared Phillips (The Final Passage, 1990, etc.), which, for all its ambition, reads more like a term paper than a novel. Intent on showing the pervasive and malign effect of slavery on both slave and slaveholder, Phillips has two narrators whose stories parallel but never really connect. The slave trade is ended, but not slavery, when 30-ish and unmarried Emily sails to a nameless Caribbean island to report on conditions on her father's plantations. Her feelings about slavery are confused—``I am not sure of what I am''—which is intentional, given her role as a somewhat impersonal conduit for information and observations on slave behavior, the slaves' African heritage, and life on the plantation, which is the setting for her education. Strangely isolated from the island community, Emily talks mostly to Stella, the slave housekeeper; the local doctor; and the overseer, Arnold Brown, a caricature of the type. Brown suddenly seduces Emily, who has hitherto been quite critical of him. But Emily as a beneficiary, however innocent, of slavery must suffer: Brown is murdered, and Emily gives birth to a still-born child. The other narrator, who tells a much shorter story, is Cambridge, an aging slave. On the eve of his execution for the murder of Brown, who had been molesting his deeply disturbed wife, he recalls his journey from Africa to England, where he was freed and educated, and the misfortune that brought him back to slavery. Emily is a synthetic creation, and only the slave Cambridge has some credibility, but even he is subordinated to theme. Fiction that manipulates rather than illuminates—which is pity because when he mutes the message, Phillips can write.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 1992

ISBN: 0-679-40532-1

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ANOTHER MAN IN THE STREET
by Caryl Phillips

- BOOK REVIEW
A VIEW OF THE EMPIRE AT SUNSET
by Caryl Phillips

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LOST CHILD
by Caryl Phillips

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
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.