A fascinating tale that’s held back by monotonous storytelling.
Against the dramatic backdrop of McCarthyism and the civil rights movement, a young Finnish woman living in the Midwest discovers the truth about her family while hiding her own secrets.
In 1983, shy, quiet 14-year-old Danny arrives home from his Wisconsin school and discovers that Lempi, his mother, has committed suicide. As he and his father, Toivo, mourn, he discovers an old newspaper photo of his parents from the 1967 Milwaukee riots and wonders what secrets lie in their seemingly innocuous past. Thus begins debut author Frahmann’s epic, globe-spanning work of historical fiction that follows the lives of Finnish family members who struggle to right the world’s wrongs and encounter heartbreak along the way. The story flashes back to Lempi’s fury-soaked youth, filled with Vietnam War protests and anger at the FBI for terrorizing her own mother into killing herself. Pauline, a university administrator who takes Lempi under her wing, encourages the girl to marry sweet, laid-back Toivo, but even after marriage and a baby, Lempi continues to fight for what she believes in, with catastrophic results. Pauline’s interest in Lempi turns out to be quite personal: She is Lempi’s biological mother, a secret that has burdened her for decades. The story unfolds, revealing more about Risto—Lempi’s biological father, who left his homeland to work in Russia—as well as Eero, Lempi’s adoptive father, who remains haunted by the losses in his own life. Frahmann’s story is an ambitious one, and his characters—especially Pauline—are intriguing. However, the book has a lackluster tone that never quite springs to life, with passages that feel a bit too didactic to be engaging: “Pauline also introduced Lempi to the real Milwaukee—a city filled with hard-working, middle-class people who built things and came home each night to modest homes that were well kept and near leafy parks.” Dialogue struggles to balance realistic conversations with historical information, making the characters sound stilted. Overall, it’s a solid effort but one that might not be engaging enough to appeal to a wide audience.
A fascinating tale that’s held back by monotonous storytelling.Pub Date: July 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692236482
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Loon Town Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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