This generational saga has the usual trappings—love affairs, power struggles, exotic settings, climbs to fame, devoted friends, vicious enemies, and murder. Mortman (The Wild Rose, 1991, etc.) tells the story of seven- year-old Isabelle de Luna, who sees her mother's rapist and murderer flee the crime scene, a suite at the Barcelona Ritz. Isabelle's devoted aristocrat father, Martin, is soon convicted, having received no help from his estranged in-laws, the Murillos, who never liked him. Martin's weak heart fails in prison, and a custody battle ensues between Isabelle's beloved aunt Flora and the Murillos. To spare Isabelle from her unkind grandparents, Flora ships her to family fiends, the Durans, in Santa Fe. The Durans raise her as their own alongside their adoptive daughter, Nina, in a small hacienda they run as a hotel. There's little money, but all are happy. The girls are yin and yang: blond, bold Nina has literary and theatrical aspirations; soft, brunette Isabelle will be an artist. The pair summer in Barcelona and frolic in the Southwest until Nina discovers the horrid truth: As an infant, she was found by the Durans in a dumpster. She will have no more to do with them or Isabelle (who was born in the back seat of a Rolls); she flees to New York, gets mixed up in a catty crowd of powermongers, and becomes a gossip columnist and TV personality. Isabelle moves to New York and quickly skyrockets to the top of the international art scene. With fame's perks come problems, including a possessive, dangerous gallery owner; Nina's tell-all biography of her sister; and true love, which Isabelle cannot embrace until she learns the identity of her mother's killer. Mortman's sweeping brush strokes are guided by formula, so don't worry: There's a climactic finale followed by a happy ending. The elements are exciting, but they are combined without innovation into a pallid blend. (Literary Guild selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-59262-2
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
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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