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IN THE MIDST OF

Name: IN THE MIDST OF
Author: C.M. Barons
ISBN: 978-1-59405-098-5

by C.M. Barons ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Period fiction that often feels like an interminable undergrad bull session.

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An enigmatic pied piper conjures the spirit of ’70s campus life in this baroque coming-of-age novel.

College sophomore Brian is eager to have his horizons expanded, which makes campus polymath and mystery man Hollis an ideal mentor. A cross between Baudelaire and Mr. Spock, Hollis toggles between sloshed romantic decadence and cold intellectualism. Equally conversant in the blues, Greek mythology and neural signal processing, he speaks French, German and Chinese, is a connoisseur of wine and hash, has a shadowy relationship with an intelligence agency and divides his spare time between writing poetry and shooting pool. Needless to say, women are hypnotized by him, despite his fetish of photographing their eyes during sex. Brian accompanies Hollis in his barhopping and partying, hanging on his every word and trying to fathom the demons that drive his troubled relationships and occasional disappearances. (The last, and best, third of the novel comprises a trove of documents–report cards, psychiatric evaluations, news articles–that pointilistically reveal Hollis’ dark past.) Barons steeps the story in Ford Administration detail–Disco! Saturday Night Live! The Equal Rights Amendment!–and skillfully draws a varied cast of characters who evoke the era’s life and language, as lingering radical-chic sentiment moved into a dawning age of psychobabble. The author’s sure feel for setting, unfortunately, is somewhat spoiled by Hollis’ anachronistic presence. Yes, the ’70s brought bohemian dissoluteness to the masses, but Hollis’ take on it–â€œI envisioned myself in a French cabaret...Toulouse-Lautrec was tending to the absinthe”–sounds more 1875 than 1975. Worse, Hollis, who dominates the story, is a bit of a bore. He wears his learning heavily–â€œYou can’t take a film like Oktober and compare it to City Lights...it is like saying bronzes from first millennium Luristan are inferior to those from China’s Shang Dynasty”–and his allusive, showily erudite discourses continue endlessly without conveying any compelling truth.

Period fiction that often feels like an interminable undergrad bull session.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-59405-098-5

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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

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OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

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NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

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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.