Witty, intelligent activist-caper, with a thought-provoking narrative that doesn’t get swamped in its own satire.
Trouble ensues when an environazi from the Left Coast hatches a plan to take down a mountain development—and seduces a few local women to help him pull it off.
Kyle Hess is one of those writers who are read only by other writers—in this case, nature writers like those in Erin Furlong’s Burlington, Vermont, workshop. A transplanted Oregonian, Erin was once Kyle’s lover back home, and she invites him to meet with her workshop and share his insights on nature writing. Not just a mere tree-hugger, Kyle is an outright saboteur who has organized and executed violent attacks against developments in California and the Pacific Northwest, and Erin’s students quickly find that he is more interested in talking about Mount Mansfield than writing. That’s because Mount Mansfield (Vermont’s highest mountain) is now being eyed by real estate developers who want to build a resort, as well as by broadcasters who have already started to erect transmitting towers at the peak. Kyle systematically works his way into the beds of three of Erin’s students—llama farmer Lauren, realtor Marianna, and sports bimbo Rachel—bringing each into his underground plan to subvert the construction. Marianna is an unwilling accomplice from the first, and Lauren becomes increasingly wary when she learns that Kyle is being hunted by angry movement types from California over some mishap that he fomented back there. But Rachel is a total groupie, and they are all madly enough in love with him to push their qualms out the window along with their self-respect. So we know there will be big trouble soon. Erin alone seems to know what Kyle is capable of, but she still goes weak in the knees when he’s about.
Witty, intelligent activist-caper, with a thought-provoking narrative that doesn’t get swamped in its own satire.Pub Date: April 16, 2004
ISBN: 1-58465-357-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2004
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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