An absorbing, if uneven, mix of beguiling magical realism and bombastic social commentary.
A spirit—too scabrous to be completely holy—walks the earth weighing human souls in this florid fantasia.
Maffei’s nameless protagonist is a disembodied being who slips in and out of minds unnoticed, savoring or recoiling at whatever he finds. In letters to a book publisher named Ms. Sylvestri, he reports his impressions of the consciousnesses he samples—from a teenager whose ear-splitting music is “a screamworld of life’s-end chaos” to a man whose nose-picking is “as sensual, almost, as man’s penetrating taking of a woman”—and offers broader observations on human nature. He is particularly taken with sexuality, and pens odes to it that are sometimes romantic (“Oh, the sudden and alive spark of one man, one woman, joined at last, the joyous clasping together, two gods embodied in one bright flame”) and sometimes earthy (“You’ve got something I want! says man to woman, his eyes on her breasts, his hands on her sweet little ass as he sinks down on his knees.”) But he is also concerned with racism and sexism, particularly the persecution he feels whites and men suffer at the hands of blacks and women. The spirit’s soliloquies intertwine with captivating short stories about people he encounters, including a homeless alcoholic redeemed by a stray dog, a Hollywood producer and his resentful boy-toy, and an affectionate but troubled older couple at an amusement park. These strands unite when the spirit borrows a comatose man’s body and lures the other characters to an uncanny seminar at which he strips bare their souls in harrowing revelations. Maffei tells this tale in several hit-and-miss registers. His well-crafted narrative vignettes are written in a subtle, fluent prose that’s full of acute observations of character and emotion. The passages in the spirit’s voice are less convincing—declamatory or mystical, straining for big ideas—“Why do your laws so very much favor black racism over white racism?”—that are rather callow. Maffei’s ghost can be tiresome, but his living characters are well worth the read.
An absorbing, if uneven, mix of beguiling magical realism and bombastic social commentary.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2010
ISBN: 978-1450504874
Page Count: 190
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2011
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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