ONLY THE LONELY

Name: ONLY THE LONELY
Author: Gary Zebrun
ISBN: 978-1-59350-084-9

by Gary Zebrun ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Despite a dearth of plot, Zebrun’s ruminative second novel (Someone You Know, 2004) captivates through the complexity and...

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Coming of age in a dying American town is hard enough. But if you’re Middle Eastern and gay...

It’s early 2001 in the small industrial town of Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo. Asim Zahid is on the verge of adulthood and anxious to escape to the University of Michigan, but tying up loose ends at home as well as the prospect of a new love provide thorny obstacles. The new love is an improbably easygoing redhead named Billy, and the very ease of this budding relationship causes Asim to question it. The major loose end comes in the person of the fragile Sonia, whose sense of reality is skewed by a lifelong immersion in classic old films. The Latvian-born Sonia was the mistress of Asim’s recently deceased father, and Asim promised to look after her as well as the Bethlehem Theater, the movie house which has been the family business for decades. Both Asim and Sonia have literally hundreds of films as reference points. (An early scene finds them comparing the relative merits of big-screen James Bonds, past and present.) Indeed, their film-viewing histories frame their observations of the world around them. While the chapters from Asim’s perspective are bathed in longing, Sonia dreamily morphs memories of past films into her analysis of a bedside clock, a homeless man, Asim’s current mood, etc. The third character in the family mix is Asim’s angry brother Tarik, who impugns the sexuality of both Asim and his father (correctly, it turns out). Tarik, who also has his cinematic influences, may be edging into a terrorist cell, less from political conviction than from inner turbulence.

Despite a dearth of plot, Zebrun’s ruminative second novel (Someone You Know, 2004) captivates through the complexity and vulnerability of its characters and the excellence of its prose, polished to a luminous transparency.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-59350-084-9

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Alyson

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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NEVER FLINCH
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YOU LIKE IT DARKER
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- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.