ISLANDS

Name: ISLANDS
Author: Dan Sleigh
ISBN: 0-15-101115-X

by Dan Sleigh & translated by André Brink ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2005

Even so, Sleigh crafts a monumental tale about momentous events on the edge of the known world, an effort resulting in a...

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A sprawling historical charts the 1650 arrival of the Dutch in what is now South Africa and limns the troubles that followed.

Real-life figures stand at the heart of South African National Archives researcher Sleigh’s first outing, reputed to have been two decades and more in the making. Early on, one of those figures, Jan van Riebeeck, arrives at Cape Town as colonial governor for the Dutch East India Company and loses little time in transforming the native landscape while dreaming of better things to come: “Where this Fort is standing now, will be a big town one day.” His native opposite, also real, is the Goringhaicona leader Autshumao, known as Chief Harry to the English (and Herrie to the Dutch). Even once Herrie accepts the notion that there will always be Hollanders on his territory, and that “the whole world would be made different,” he is a most reluctant ally: He’d rather be speaking English, the only thing he has to barter. But the Dutch do business otherwise, and they soon war on the native peoples. Newcomers and indigenes die, and Herrie becomes the first prisoner on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela would later spend so many years. In turn, van Riebeeck adopts a Goringhaicona girl, the resonantly named Eva, mother of the colony’s first mixed-blood, a girl whom many love but few know. Sleigh’s ambitious tale, which weaves the lives of seven major characters and many minor ones into a packed and occasionally even crowded narrative, is far better written than the standard textbook, but it sometimes has a textbookish feel all the same; a reader without some knowledge of the South African past and an ability to keep track of Sleigh’s detailed subplots about the fates of doomed warriors and pensive women may soon feel lost.

Even so, Sleigh crafts a monumental tale about momentous events on the edge of the known world, an effort resulting in a major contribution to modern South African literature.

Pub Date: April 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-15-101115-X

Page Count: 768

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004

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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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.