A diffident but ultimately entertaining exploration of a famous literary lacuna.
A debut historical novel fills a mysterious three-year gap in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
As a young, Roma-looking orphan, Heathcliff is adopted by Old Earnshaw and taken to live with his family at their estate, Wuthering Heights. In this first section, Drum closely follows Brontë’s description of events: Heathcliff becomes nearly inseparable from Old Earnshaw’s daughter, Catherine, but is abused and eventually forced into a servant’s role by his son, Hindley. Years pass, and one night Heathcliff overhears Cathy claiming that it would “degrade” her to marry him; distraught, he flees the estate and vows that he’ll make himself into a rich gentleman worthy of the woman he loves. From there, the book imagines what might have occurred over the next three years, which remain curiously unexplored in the classic novel. The author offers the possibility that Heathcliff finds work as a sailor in the Atlantic triangle trade, voyaging from the western coast of Africa to Jamaica and back to England. Along the way, Heathcliff experiences the rough conditions of a life at sea, the allures and hazards of exotic cultures, and the horrors of the slave trade. He witnesses the greed and malice of powerful men and stays true to his own values as a consequence. But upon his return to England, he preoccupies himself with exterior matters, hoping to transform into a fashionable society man. It’s a credit to the author that direct lines and scenes from Wuthering Heights fit seamlessly into the overall narrative. Each locale is vibrantly rendered, from the ship’s tight quarters to the sprawl and seduction of Victorian London. Heathcliff himself appears somewhat less vivid, partly due to the tale’s detached tone and its focus on adventure over interiority. In some ways, the book openly depicts brutality, as in an effective scene where slaves are branded. But it also shies away from hints of Heathcliff’s personal cruelty, instead envisioning him as blandly compassionate, naïve, and heroic. As a result, 19th- and 21st-century framings coexist in ways both successful and distracting.
A diffident but ultimately entertaining exploration of a famous literary lacuna.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9911857-7-1
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Burning Books Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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