An often well-told, if occasionally puzzling, tale of a Semper Fi sisterhood.
In Kelly’s debut novel, four young women bond in the U.S. Marine Corps.
In 2001, Allyn Kend, who works at a Starbucks in Manhattan, enlists in the Marines. Her fiancé, Eliot Michaels, is already a lance corporal, and she wonders in what ways the corps will change her. At the Parris Island training installation in South Carolina, she meets fellow recruits, including wealthy Forsythia “Syth” Sangiorgio; Korean-American YeonBi “Bibi” Shim; and devoted Christian Jessica “Jezi” Kellerman. These new recruits, known as “turkey gobblers,” endure the break-’em-down, build-’em-up rigors of boot camp, determined to join the few and the proud. They must prove themselves physically and mentally fit as they gain expertise in rescue and rifles, survive on half-rations and learn to stand up for each other. After the Twin Towers fall on September 11, the significance of their commitment to military service deepens. Brusque superiors abound; one needles Allyn for her masculine-sounding name: “[A]re you really a boy sneaking in here to cuddle up with the ladies?” In brief, personal moments, the women reflect upon their love lives; Allyn is on track to wed Eliot but can’t forget her passion for the married Hector Archuleta. The novel pairs solid characterization with the authentic feel of military life, providing an inside look at daily rituals, military protocol and fledgling friendships among the Marines. Especially touching is the story of Lance Cpl. Jezi inspiring the privileged Cpl. Gabriel Lassiter to do the right thing. The dialogue is often fine, but the prose can be awkward: “Allyn’s wedding cake, I was determined, would crown her portfolio ready for the bigger and better.” Initially, the tale is undermined by its jumpy structure (providing, for example, two different characters’ points of view of the same conversation in separate sections), and it can be repetitive and confusing. The many-layered plot also touches on sex trafficking, pregnancy both in and out of wedlock, family dramas back home, moral dilemmas and suicide. However, the story’s focus strengthens toward the end.
An often well-told, if occasionally puzzling, tale of a Semper Fi sisterhood.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490420615
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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