Tom Sawyer it's not, though wisdom and humor infuse this straightforward first novel about the encroachment of modern inventions on the isolated lives of a North Carolina mountain family more than 80 years ago. Himself a North Carolina native, member of a family of traditional storytellers, and author of five previous books (Listening for the Crack of Dawn, not reviewed, etc.), Davis takes as his protagonist here an old-timer named Medford Henry McGee, who finds and rereads the diary he kept during the years 191013. Age ten when his account begins, young Medford chronicles the lives of his parents, brothers, sisters, and grandpa, as well as the rhythms of rural life, with its courtings, marriages, births, illnesses, chores, lessons in the one-room schoolhouse, and Sunday church picnics. The routine is occasionally broken by the arrival of a new teacher, barn burnings by a local arsonist, or news from the outside world in the paper Medford's father receives. Medford livens up his diary entries with information gleaned from his father's paper. He tells of revolution in Nicaragua, the arrival of airplanes and automobiles, and former president Teddy Roosevelt's elephant hunt in Africa. He makes jokes about elected officials- -``About the only thing I can remember hearing about President Taft is that he is the fattest President in our history''—and in his smart, boyishly honest way comments on current events: ``I think that the reason that Mr. Taft is interested in Nicaragua to start with is to keep trouble away from that canal the USA is digging across Panama.'' But this isn't enough to sustain readers' interest. The diary remains just that; Davis takes no risks either with narrative style or characterization. A sentimental journey that never quite soars.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-87483-379-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: August House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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