The author of the renowned Fear of Flying, among other novels, offers a pastiche of fictionalized anecdotes, breezy philosophical pronouncements, and amusing Yiddish homilies (``When a rogue kisses you, count your teeth'') in a family saga of four generations of Jewish women creating art (and havoc) in and out of New York. ``Sometimes, in dreams, my first-born son comes back to me,'' begins Sarah, the long-dead Levitsky family matriarch who narrates her story from beyond the grave. Sarah's infant son, Dovie, was killed in Russia by Cossacks, a tragedy that prompts the indomitable photographer's assistant to flee to America in search of a better life. Beginning her career in a sweatshop, Sarah soon graduates to drawing catalogue illustrations, then painting the portraits of New York's wealthiest. She eventually marries the protective art dealer Lev Levitsky. The Levitskys make a handsome living off Lev's gallery and Sarah's paintings, with their only anxieties centered on their bohemian writer-daughter, Salome, whose life in Paris includes her own literary magazine and an affair with author Henry Miller. Eventually, though, even Salome settles down enough to give birth to beautiful Sally, who grows up to throw herself into the '60s Greenwich Village folk-music scene, quickly becomes a national icon, then proceeds to destroy herself with drugs and alcohol. By then, though, she's produced her own daughter, Sara. Sara's father wins her in a custody dispute, spirits her away to Montana, and refuses to tell her who her mother is. Inevitably, Sara the adult becomes the family chronicler, determined to use Salome's journal, Sally's '60s interviews, and her own musings over a woman's place in history to re-create the past, get to know these women, and assure their immortality. A clunky but heartfelt work. Still, many of the topics mulled over here (the Jewish immigration to America, the continuing challenges for female artists, women's spirituality) were more effectively addressed in Jong's recent nonfiction (Fear of Fifty, 1994, etc.). (First printing of 150,000; $250,000 ad/promo; author tour; TV & radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-017943-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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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