Haynes (Live at Five, 1996, etc.) unleashes his satiric verve on preteen beauty pageants and midlife crises in this tale of an adwoman who returns to the nest. Thirtysomething Deneen Wilkerson is a ``Rubenesque'' resident of Minneapolis working on a non-euphemistic ad campaign for douche spray when she goes on an ill-fated romantic vacation. As she and her boyfriend, Calvin, speed down I-94 toward a rural inn, the unhappy Calvin chooses the occasion to tell her he's gay. Deneen is so unsettled by the breakup of her only serious post-college relationship that she decides to go home to St. Louis and get some long-overdue nurturing from Mom, now widowed for a second time. But Deneen hasn't counted on her bratty 12-year-old half-sister Ciara, who's busy planning a campaign to carry her all the way to the top of the ``All American Dream Dolls'' pageant under the guidance of her eccentric, driven manager Hawkins DeAngeles. Deneen's first reaction to the vain and unsympathetic Ciara is to spend a week in hibernation with Wheat Thins, pound cake, and talk shows, which teach her that Ciara displays all of the ``ten warning signs of toxic people.'' Subsequently, Deneen's relationship with Ciara descends through several levels of sisterly manipulation and attempted sabotage while Ciara, meantime, is beset by cutthroat competition, talentless Whitney Houston imitators, and the impending end of preteen adorableness. But though the sisters never quite learn to hit it off, Deneen's presence proves beneficial for everyone as she strikes up a surprisingly healthy relationship with a would-be pageant impresario named Mark and persuades her mother to take more responsibility for Ciara's future. Haynes's strokes are broad, but he delivers a frequently hilarious novel, with consistently on-target punch lines and an eye for real people. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1997
ISBN: 1-57131-015-0
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
A super-exorcism that leaves the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth and what a bad taste it is. King presents us with the riddle of a small Maine town that has been deserted overnight. Where did all the down-Easters go? Matter of fact, they're still there but they only get up at sundown. . . for a warm drink. . . .Ben Mears, a novelist, returns to Salem's Lot (pop. 1319), the hometown he hasn't seen since he was four years old, where he falls for a young painter who admires his books (what happens to her shouldn't happen to a Martian). Odd things are manifested. Someone rents the ghastly old Marsten mansion, closed since a horrible double murder-suicide in 1939; a dog is found impaled on a spiked fence; a healthy boy dies of anemia in one week and his brother vanishes. Ben displays tremendous calm considering that you're left to face a corpse that sits up after an autopsy and sinks its fangs into the coroner's neck. . . . Vampirism, necrophilia, et dreadful alia rather overplayed by the author of Carrie (1974).
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1975
ISBN: 0385007515
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
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