Passion-plagued characters, an adverb for every emotion, and an addictive novel-within-a-novel come together for something...
A “long and complicated childhood” becomes a complicated adulthood for two families in Palmer’s entertaining sixth (The Golden Rule, 1998, etc.).
The paths of the Harding family and the Fox family cross in 1928, when Sybil Fox, widow, comes on as governess at the Harding country house in England. Though as different as “chalk and cheese,” Nettie Harding (the one daughter among three brothers) and Mary Fox (Sybil’s daughter) become best friends. As the dictates of class and melodrama would have it, Mary Fox falls in love with the eldest Harding brother, Godfrey (who has a dark secret), but she in turn is loved by his brother William. Nettie seduces the stable boy, Joshua, and, after they are caught in flagrante it seems pretty certain that Joshua will reappear at a most inconvenient time in Nettie’s future. Among the grown-ups, Sybil Fox seduces father Geoffry Harding, a political bigwig who spends most of his time in London with the mysterious Rafe Bartholomew (Churchill's closest confidante) rather than at home with wife Davina. Then, just as the misguided desires of the various Hardings and Foxes threaten to erupt, all becomes subsumed into a greater issue: WWII. The Harding boys go off to battle; Nettie marries a wealthy alcoholic, changes her name to Venetia, and offers sexual favors in return for political secrets; Sybil Fox leaves behind her “notebooks” and her bereaved daughter, Mary, who takes a job helping to crack the German code. The search for true love, the misalignment of loyalties, and ever-ready Chaos are the true engines of Palmer’s story, throughout whose second half many bombs are dropped—by war, by friends, by family—that shatter illusions and unearth astonishing numbers of secrets in the lives of all.
Passion-plagued characters, an adverb for every emotion, and an addictive novel-within-a-novel come together for something akin to a satisfying mug of ale.Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26141-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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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