What would have happened if Elvis Presley's real-life twin, Jesse Garon, hadn't died at birth? That's the premise of Duff's third novel (Indian Giver, 1983, etc.), a mildly engaging southern yarn telling the life story of the King's unknown double. Duff portrays the twins' mother as a mystic who's heavily influenced by the moon. She has a revelation on the night she gets pregnant with the two boys, and later on decides to send Jesse off to live with nearby relatives. ``Elvis is light, and you're the heavy one,'' she tells him. ``Elvis rises up and you live in the world.'' In other words, Elvis gets to be a prima donna while Jesse must suffer like an ordinary schmo. What's worse, he has to do Elvis's dirty work. By the fifth grade, Jesse (who's also impersonating his brother at school by then) is beating up bullies who've picked on sensitive little Elvis. Years later, he gets his brother through the high school talent show; and it's Jesse who records at Sun Studios, but Elvis who gets the credit. When the King is too bloated and nervous to perform on the Ed Sullivan show, Jesse comes to the rescue and shakes his moneymaker like Elvis never could. Jesse runs off to far-flung places in order to try to make a separate life for himself, but he's repeatedly drawn back to save Elvis. He even prolongs his brother's marriage by making love to Priscilla when Elvis himself has lost interest. After his twin dies, Jesse becomes the best Elvis impersonator on the planet. Duff has a deft comic touch, but he's mining a familiar vein and shedding little new light on the icon. Reading this one is like watching Viva Las Vegas on a sunny Sunday afternoon: slightly amusing, but mowing the lawn might be just as fun.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1995
ISBN: 1-880909-33-2
Page Count: 260
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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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