An anthropologist and his family take a chimpanzee into their home and make more of a fuss over the animal than readers are likely to in a first novel by science writer Preston (Cities of Gold, 1992). A curator at the Boston Museum of Natural History, Dr. Hugo Archibald goes to Africa to buy chimpanzee skulls and falls in love with a baby chimp, whom he brings home to his wife, Lea, and their young children, Sandy and Sarah. The Archibalds raise Jennie as a human child, dressing her in diapers and kids' clothes and buying her dolls and toys, and Jennie and Sandy become inseparable best friends. A neighbor who is a Christian minister takes it upon himself to bring Jennie to Jesus, and a primate researcher teaches her sign language. But then Jennie hits puberty, her hormones kick in, and, predictably, she becomes uncontrollable; the fate of this chimp who thinks she's human is not a pretty one. Much more insightful when it comes to animals than humans, Preston hasn't worked out the Archibalds' motivations, and this omission is a serious flaw of the novel. Preston seems to want readers to think that the Archibalds are merely eccentric when all his evidence points to the fact that these people are disturbed and that Jennie is filling some bizarre need in the family. Preston throws us a few tidbits—an adult Sarah confesses that she had hated Jennie because she believed that her father loved the chimpanzee better; Hugo, discussing with a colleague Jennie's care after he and his wife are dead, says that the Jennie problem is no different than having a mentally retarded child—but they only confuse us all the more. It doesn't help matters that the novel, written as an oral history, masquerades as nonfiction. As a novel, this is sometimes sweet but mostly strange. Better to take the kids to the soon-to-be-made Disney movie; Jennie's sophomoric monkeyshines—peddling away on her tricycle, scarfing bananas, and giving all and sundry ``the finger''—may play better on the silver screen than they do on the written page.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11294-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 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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