A disappointingly unaffecting saga from West Virginia novelist Giardina (Good King Harry, 1984, Storming Heaven, 1987) about the deathwatch of a once-vibrant Appalachian mining community. Beginning when coal was still king with the 1930's childhood of central characters Rachel and cousin Dillon, Giardina introduces the men and women who live along Blackberry Creek. They are a small and close community of representative types: Arthur Lee, the company man who finally comes through decades later when tragedy strikes because ``they are my people too''; Doyle Ray, who goes to Vietnam and returns a fundamentalist preacher; Toejam, of small intellect but big heart, who marries crippled Brenda; and Hassel, a bar-owner and the most memorable and original character here, who is set on building a bridge across the creek to make life a little easier for everybody. These people's lives are shaped and dominated by the coal seams that permeate their beloved mountains and give them employment. Though Dillon, a labor activist and son of a martyred union organizer, and Rachel love each other, Rachel marries Italian bookkeeper Tony. But passion will out: the other two get together, and Jackie is conceived, though she won't know that Dillon is her real dad for most of the book. When Jackie grows up, she meets VISTA worker Tom—the 1960's War on Poverty is on— but Tom is going to be a priest, so Jackie goes to work in Washington. She's unable to forget the mountains or Tom, however, so she returns to Blackberry Creek. Here, miners are being dismissed, benefits cut, even the great strike of the 1980's is ignored by the usual sympathizers; and when the dam, built of slag at the valley head, finally bursts, the destruction of the community is complete. Lives of not-so-quiet desperation luminously described, but despite a great subject and setting, the major characters who should hold it all together never do.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-393-03096-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
A somewhat puzzling book, but — all in all — it is good Hemingway, and a sure sale. Key West and Cuba form the settings for a tough story of men at the end of their tether, grasping at any straw, regardless of risk, to turn a few dollars. Rum-running, smuggling aliens, carrying revolutionary arms. Gangsters, rich sportsmen, sated with routine, dissipated women and men — they are not an incentive to belief in the existence of decent people. But in spite of the hard-boiled, bitter and cruel streak, there is a touch of tenderness, sympathy, humanity. Adventure — somewhat disjointed. The first section seems simply to set the stage — the story starting after the prelude is over. The balance forms a unit, working up to a tragic climax and finale. There is something of The Sun Also Rises,and a Faulkner quality, Faulkner at his best. A book for men — and not for the squeamish. You know your Hemingway market. His first novel in 8 years.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1937
ISBN: 0684859238
Page Count: 177
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1937
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Edgar’s own story in the present is more compelling than the revelations of the key’s past, and the novel might have been...
The prolific master of psycho-horror returns to the mysteries of the creative process, a subject that has inspired some of his most haunting work.
This could be considered a companion piece to The Shining, offering plenty of reversals on that plot. In both cases, isolation has severe effects on the psyche of an artist, yet where the former novel found its protagonist in a lethal state of writer’s block, the latter sees a one-time building magnate transformed into an impossibly prolific and powerful painter, due to circumstances beyond his control. And where the isolation in the former had a family cut off from society by a frigid northern winter, the setting of the latter is a mysterious Florida key, lush and tropical in its overgrowth, somehow immune to commercial development. A self-made millionaire, Edgar Freemantle narrates the novel in a conversational, matter-of-fact tone. He explains how a job-site accident cost him his arm, his sanity (during the early part of an extended recuperation) and his wife (whom he had physically threatened after the accident transformed him into something other than himself). What he gained was a seemingly inexplicable command as a visual artist, particularly after his recuperation (from both his accident and his marriage) takes him to the isolated Duma Key, where the only other inhabitants are an elderly, wealthy woman and her caretaker. It seems that all three have suffered severe traumas that bond them and that perhaps have even drawn them together. Soon Edgar discovers that his art has given him the power not only to predict the future, but to transform it. He ultimately pays a steep price for his artistic gifts, particularly as his investigation of the mysteries of Duma Key lead him to discover the tragic origins of his artistic vision.
Edgar’s own story in the present is more compelling than the revelations of the key’s past, and the novel might have been twice as powerful if it had been cut by a third, but King fans will find it engrossing.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5251-2
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
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