A book of candor and complexity that captures human relations with heart-rending accuracy.
An emotional and surprising story of a fractured family.
This novel is a nonchronological tale of the interwoven lives of Liesel, who is vivacious yet irresponsible; Joel, her ex-husband, who is staunch yet critical; their daughter, Idzia, who is artistic yet wounded; and their many dear friends and romantic loves. Five years after she leaves Joel, Liesel begins semiregularly calling him in the middle of the night to request child support. He's willing to send money if he's allowed to be a part of Idzia’s life—a request to which Liesel cannot bear to agree. After many years of these nighttime disruptions and many attempts on Joel’s part for legal intervention, Liesel is spurred by her life-threatening illness to concede to a visit. But on the planned day, 17-year-old Idzia never arrives, and Joel is left waiting at the Boston airport. What follows is an exploration of why: what led to this moment and what came after. In vibrant prose, she describes Liesel's life before she met Joel, when she was an entirely different person but no less unsatisfied; Joel’s impatience, which compelled Liesel to have an affair, causing their marriage to fall apart; and the no-less-imperfect relationships that came after. The story’s structure, jumping back and forth in time and place, allows these authentic, flawed characters to be fully fleshed out. Spark (Pretty Girl, 2012, etc.) offers nuggets of poignant wisdom, such as when a dear family friend explains to Idzia, in the most intense hour of her life, “At the moment, your resources for dealing with pain are unequal to your pain. The challenge, for the rest of your life, will be to change that.” Spark’s principal accomplishment, though, is the care she takes to create multidimensional characters who behave in unexpected, truthful ways. Their fullness and intricacy gracefully illustrate how every story has many versions, every memory many interpretations.
A book of candor and complexity that captures human relations with heart-rending accuracy.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8071-6469-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
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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