A stylistic tour de force, suffering from a little too much thematic connecting of the dots.
The head of a London office on Race Equality ends his affair with a woman he supervises, launching a schematic set of repercussions in this new novel by Phillips (Foreigners, 2007, etc.).
Keith Gordon is intelligent, articulate, even reflective, but very quickly the reader learns not to trust his judgment of his own actions and character. A black man of West Indian descent, separated for three years from the white wife he romanced at university, the 47-year-old has no clue as to the issues of power involved in his romance with a 26-year-old subordinate, or about how she might react to their breakup. Thus he’s far more surprised than the reader when the relationship he considered little more than a physical release throws his own life into shambles. Testing the reader’s credulity, Keith soon after attempts to seduce another young woman, a Polish immigrant whose station in society is far lower than his. Though race appears to be a primary consideration early on—from Keith’s career and his wife to the white stepmother who raised him and the mistress who could pass for white—this is ultimately a novel of generations. Keith feels distant from both his son, derided by classmates as a “halfie,” and his immigrant father. The plot is overdetermined, but it’s hard to deny or resist the stylistic subtlety of a narrative that encompasses (sometimes on the same page) the past, the near past and the distant past from the perspective of Keith’s muddled psyche. The novel builds to an extended soliloquy that offers plenty of revelation for protagonist and reader alike, as Keith and his father attempt to forge a bond after years of estrangement. Phillips’ protagonist remains a mystery, though the reader will come to know him better than he knows himself.
A stylistic tour de force, suffering from a little too much thematic connecting of the dots.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-27256-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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