A rousing Renaissance tale of adventure and Machiavellian affairs of state: playwright Herman's first novel chronicles the creation of the original ensemble of commedia dell'arte players, building on his (1966) award-winning play A Company of Wayward Saints. When a vagabond wearing rags of many colors and speaking riddles in Latin and Greek encounters an aging whore in her wagon, she offers him food and transport to the south of Italy in exchange for dancing and reading lessons. Harlequin and Colombia begin a slow journey through a countryside full of rogues and French invaders, and cities full of priests of the Inquisition, spies of the Borgian pope, and cutpurses, gathering to them a company of outcasts and misfits—the father-and-son team of Scapino and Pantalone, juggler and thief; the Dottore, a renegade assistant of Da Vinci's, to whom is given the task of leading beautiful Isabella, the unsuspecting love child of anti-Borgia nobility, safely away from dreaded Cesare Borgia; the wild young prostitute Ruffina, eager to leave Parma before a former customer catches her; Capitano, an Italian soldier too proud to serve the French and too talented to be executed by them; and the handsome student Tristano, in search of excitement. As they travel together toward Rome, they coalesce into an acting troupe to disguise their identities and Harlequin's vital mission—but in performing before the downtrodden, weary masses, they quickly become a sensation, entering the Eternal City in triumph rather than in secret and significantly hastening the demise of the Borgias. Vibrant Italian history, first-rate storytelling: a masterful, thoroughly charming debut.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-345-38150-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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