Despite mildly pedantic angelic dialogues, the realistic view of Palestinian difficulties and the vision offered here of a...
A curious fantasy, inspired by Leigh Hunt’s famous 1834 poem, “Abou Ben Adhem,” mingles metaphysics and grim reality: a gentle Arab grandfather living in Gaza is visited nightly by an angel who offers advice and consolation as the man’s life is turned upside down by a tragic series of events.
Ensconced in his son-in-law Yasser’s orchard in his father’s goat-herding tent, Abou is content to watch his grandchildren grow, and to get together for lunch with his village cronies, willing to forget that he was once visited by an angel who proclaimed him the best of men. But another angel comes to call, Cohen, and after a rocky start they begin a series of wide-ranging conversations every time Abou falls asleep. Cohen has brought word that Abou is no longer at the top of the list of good men (replaced by Jimmy Carter), and Abou wants to regain his place. Faced with mean-spirited Yasser’s effort to move him out, Abou sets up his tent behind a friend’s bank, there establishing a kind of living museum where school kids can come to learn about the goat-herding ways of their people. When Yasser starts beating his wife and spreading vile rumors about Abou, however, additional measures are called for: learning that Yasser’s business is failing and that he’s about to lose his house in a tax foreclosure, Abou pays the taxes and takes the house, moving in with his daughter and the children while putting Yasser on the street. The museum, now sponsored by Hamas, allows Abou to continue instructing children, including his earnest young grandson, but the involvement of Hamas leads to treachery and a loss so severe that the angel Cohen must take unparalleled action.
Despite mildly pedantic angelic dialogues, the realistic view of Palestinian difficulties and the vision offered here of a better life are a welcome addition to the never-ending debate on the Middle East.Pub Date: March 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-882593-51-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
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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