A sometimes-bumpy but always compelling tale about a budding murderer.
A teacher witnesses the birth of a serial killer in the form of one of her students in this debut psychological thriller.
Libby Teach barely escaped a serial killer when she was 9 years old: her own Uncle Roger, who molested her and warned her to never tell. Now she works as a sixth grade teacher. One of her students is Russell Thomas, the son of a serial killer. Roger Allen Watson—the Trailer Park Murderer, who met his end via lethal injection—raped Russell’s mother when she was just 14. She now works as a stripper and prostitute, and her boyfriend, Wayne Jetsoe, molests 12-year-old Russell whenever he gets the chance. Russell likes Miss Teach: “She was pretty and seemed to care about all of her students even Russell. Maybe especially Russell. She often stood by his desk when she was lecturing about history and smiled at him like they shared a secret or something.” For her part, Libby is starting to worry about Russell and the violent things he writes in his journal. Is it possible that he may have inherited a few things from his father—the same man who molested Libby when she was a girl? Funk’s plot is an intricate dance between the various characters: not just Libby and Russell, but also others, including psychotic Wayne and handsome policeman Mike O’Malley, the protagonist’s love interest. The author’s prose is broad and simple: “Bud was the local go to guy for most drugs. Users like Leo were always looking for a new way to get high and forget about their miserable existence. Ironically, Bud was a conscientious drug dealer. He didn’t want his regulars getting messed up and dying.” Funk attempts to not only show how a serial killer behaves, but to identify the childhood roots of that behavior as well. In that sense, the book succeeds: Readers will feel badly for Russell even as they are horrified by what he is becoming. While the presentation is not quite as smooth as it could be, the novel is generally thrilling and thoroughly unafraid to take readers to some very dark places.
A sometimes-bumpy but always compelling tale about a budding murderer.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72875-892-3
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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