Strong writing chops sculpt an odyssey from an addict’s raw life.
This debut novel follows a group of HIV-positive gay men in the Los Angeles area.
Middle-aged Bert Sykes has HIV. He’s also a dealer and user of methamphetamine, which makes him hellbent on having sex and cleaning house. His friend Korn (also gay and an addict) owns a house in a Jewish neighborhood, where he is entirely unwelcome. Meanwhile, in North Hollywood, Mike Gallagher has graduated from the Cri-Life Recovery House (a place that’s “not just gay friendly, but gay sensitive”). His friend Rogarth was kicked out of Cri-Life by the sanctimonious Rick, a “fag with AIDS who quotes Ayn Rand.” The men’s travels and travails unfold through philosophical rants—like the similarity between ordering a burrito and being at the doctor—and flashbacks involving people like Becky Stein, an infamous “Kaiser Soze” among gay drug dealers. Further details about Cri-Life emerge as well, including the resident hoods, whose hard exteriors crack when they dance the Hokey-Pokey, and the meal called Spread, made with ramen noodles, Tabasco sauce, and mayonnaise that’s mixed in a giant trash bag. Thanks to the prevalence of HIV medications, those afflicted now have better prognoses, though whether salvation or damnation lies ahead for Bert and the others must still be decided. In this hilarious, if dark, debut, author Weaver places readers directly into the minds of meth-heads who are “constructing their own constantly changing contexts” to “fit new and different versions of themselves.” Skirting a traditional plot, Weaver’s adventures flow and burble like liquor taps, and ideas spill every which way, similar to the work of William Burroughs. His portraits continually entertain, like when he tells us that a bear (a burly, hairy gay man) is “the kind of guy who’s found a way to capitalize on his aversion to exercise along with his considerable appetite for pasta, cheese and peach cobbler.” Weaver’s marriage of the high and the low—the classical music digressions and the dirty sex fantasies—will broaden most readers’ horizons.
Strong writing chops sculpt an odyssey from an addict’s raw life.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61296-808-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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