A sometimes compelling, if flawed, recovery drama.
In Litwack’s (There Comes a Prophet, 2012) latest novel, a young U.S. Army lieutenant tries to overcome his physical and emotional demons after he’s wounded in Iraq.
Freddie Williams wakes up in a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Boston to discover that his leg has been severely damaged by a roadside bomb that killed several other soldiers in his squad. The doctors tell him that he’ll never regain the full use of his limb, and he’ll have to work hard to ever walk again. He’s initially unmotivated to do so, as he’s haunted by memories of his deceased parents and missing brother, but his tough physical therapist, Becky, encourages him. His recovery is long and difficult, and he’s beset by survivor’s guilt. Litwack intersperses the novel’s realistic portions with fantasy chapters that resemble a “World of Warcraft” video game quest; they feature Freddie’s alter ego, a dauphin called Frederick, undertaking a trip that symbolically echoes Freddie’s real-world journey. Unfortunately, these portions may appeal only to readers familiar with such fantasy tropes; to others, they may simply be jarring, as they don’t add necessary elements to the main plot or to the characters’ emotional arcs. The author has a good grasp of the difficulties facing those recovering from severe combat injuries, but his characters seem less psychologically complex as the story progresses. Freddie’s relationship with Becky is particularly predictable and troublesome; she’s depicted as more of a romanticized figure than a fully realized person, and she mainly serves as Freddie’s main motivation to get better. (She even explicitly says that she’s his “reason to make the leap” to move on through life.) Freddie’s progress is linked to his idealized vision of Becky, which lessens the story’s overall emotional resonance.
A sometimes compelling, if flawed, recovery drama.Pub Date: June 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1771150972
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Double Dragon Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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