Prolific Native American novelist and essayist Glancy (The West Pole, 1997) returns to territory she first explored in the short novel The Only Piece of Furniture in the House (1996), probing the spiritual resources and yearnings of apparently nondescript figures. Flutie, her heroine, is 13 when we first meet her, living in a hard, grim little Oklahoma town, held at arm’s length by a ferociously unhappy mother, and yearning for support, which is not forthcoming, from her taciturn father. He’s a Cherokee, long cut off from his people—the only tie he maintains to that past is a sweatlodge behind the house, to which he periodically retreats. Flutie has more than the usual set of adolescent problems: Following a childhood accident, and her grisly mistreatment by a doctor, she finds it difficult to say more than a few halting words. Ignored by her schoolmates and by her family, tormented by visions of supernatural messengers, and without any sort of religious framework to explain her experiences, she repeatedly sinks into lethargic dismay. Glancy demonstrates a strong and very particular gift for catching the way in which spiritual yearnings work on an untutored mind. The narrative follows Flutie through adolescence and on to college. Along the way, she experiments disastrously with drugs and alcohol, learns, painfully, to begin to distance herself from her self-destructive family, and even discovers a calling. More importantly, buoyed by her visions of the natural world and the mysterious spirituality woven into it, she begins, haltingly, to speak. Readers may find Glancy’s terse descriptions of Flutie’s dysfunctional family repetitive and unenlightening. And her slow, subtle excavation of Flutie’s consciousness (which is particularly fragmented in the early scenes) may prove tedious for some. Still, there’s real power and originality in Glancy’s stubborn focus on seemingly impoverished lives. Her insistence on the saving presence of spirituality in even badly damaged characters is moving and, ultimately, convincing.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55921-212-8
Page Count: 130
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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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