Filipino novelist JosÇ makes his US debut with these three novellas—ostensible love stories that are also vehicles for indictments of contemporary Filipino politics and culture. Each is a tale of disappointed love, of men catching but never able to keep the women they love in a setting where corruption is endemic and Filipino nationalists struggle to promote a national identity under assault from both the US and Japan. In ``Cadeno De Amor,'' Eddie analyses the rise of Narita Reyes, a childhood friend, whom he was later to advise in her successful political campaigns. Driven by her desire to escape the humiliations of her childhood poverty, Narita marries well and is soon a protÇgÇ of her wealthy father-in-law, who funds her Senate campaign—an expensive business, for, as Eddie notes, everyone from journalists to local officials must be bribed. Even Eddie, who loves her, begins to believe ``that nothing much could be done about our political malaise until she had real power.'' And when the elected Narita dies in a bizarre accident, the ``mythmakers'' are ready. It is still politics as usual. In the second story, ``Obsession,'' a wealthy Filipino business man is in love with the enigmatic prostitute Ermi, who defends her way of life and decision to marry an American by asking him whether she ``has ever stolen from anyone like those big people whom you know and serve.'' The young protagonist of the third piece, ``Platinum,'' loves and loses beautiful Malu—a young woman of good family who's at ease only when ``trying to help people'' and who, wanting to do something useful with her life, becomes a member of an underground guerilla movement, then dies in a raid. Schematically awkward but redeemed by vivid local color, and imbued with a palpable but unsentimental concern for the author's country. A promising introduction.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41360-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
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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