By turns self-congratulatory and moralistic: a lowbrow aim at smart women.
Preachy, glum debut tale of mid-40s wife and mother in the doldrums of suburban New Jersey.
Deriding the 1950s housewifery of her pampered mother, whose panacea for her Long Island depression was to have another child, middle-aged daughter Julie Berman acts out boldly in order not to behave in the same passive, nonconfrontational way in her own household with husband Eric and two almost grown children. On a visit to Palm Beach to visit her breezy, ailing parents, Julie learns that her 74-year-old mother has pancreatic cancer and has no intention of seeking treatment: “She doesn’t want any pain,” her bland father assures Julie. Then, returning home, Julie is informed that daughter Alexis, attending college upstate, wants to join the junior-year abroad program in order to be with her new love interest, young married professor Russell, and Lexie, by the way, is still a virgin. Sixteen-year-old son Jake, on the other hand, has just met a girl named Beth and lost his own virginity, in the bedroom of their home, while Julie’s supervisor at the New Jersey Suburban Sentinel is attractive, witty, single and coming on to her. Julie’s husband (a “Neanderthal”) has rather more old world ideas of protecting Lexie’s honor (Mafia style), but the parents cook up a scheme to invite charming Russell to a rollicking seder, featuring many colorful and irrepressible relatives. Russell comes, is duly insulted, balks and backs out, then writes a best-selling novel about his love for young Lexie. Borden’s prose, however, does not move this swiftly; instead, it tends to dwell and mope, unlike sleeker similar plotting by Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs, 2002: in both novels, the somewhat estranged, long-time married parents always end up happily in bed at the end). Here, the author is clearly groping for the same audience.
By turns self-congratulatory and moralistic: a lowbrow aim at smart women.Pub Date: July 5, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-8221-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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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