A well-developed and enchanting odyssey involving an apparition who ends up aiding the living.
Helping a spirit to find peace allows a woman to put to rest some of the ghosts in her own life in this debut novel.
Saaina’s fetching protagonist is Jaya, an overworked medical student and researcher in Nashville. Jaya had fled to the United States from her native India to escape her life of privilege and her suffocating family. She’s content with her busy lifestyle, although she develops a yearning for a place of her own. Jaya is drawn to a quaint fixer-upper in the suburbs, which she falls in love with. There is only one problem she hadn’t expected: It’s haunted. One night, she hears noises in a vacant room upstairs, and there, she discovers the diary of Tara, the house’s previous resident. Tara died of cancer, and the diary contains her bucket list, which she had been unable to complete. So Jaya decides to finish the list for Tara to help her spirit move on, with the support of the woman’s old neighbor Leo. At first, the tasks are simple, such as dating a man in uniform and singing karaoke. But she balks when she spots the item “solve a cold case.” In the midst of this crusade, Jaya rushes home to India when her beloved grandmother becomes ill. She also continues working on Tara’s list without realizing that the ghost has been guiding and assisting her all along. The most enjoyable part of Saaina’s novel is watching Jaya evolve from a somewhat self-involved woman to one who goes out of her way to help a perfect (albeit, dead) stranger. While doing so, Jaya gets reconnected to her extended family, which she had tried to leave behind. She even considers the previously unlikely possibility of getting married—to a childhood friend. Saaina, who’s also a native of India, successfully unveils that nation’s upper-caste society, a world unknown to many readers. The author skillfully weaves together seemingly disparate elements—Tara’s list, Jaya’s volunteer cancer research, an Indian cold case, and a charred psychiatric hospital—into a compelling narrative. Jaya’s selfless act results in her ultimately enjoying a fuller life.
A well-developed and enchanting odyssey involving an apparition who ends up aiding the living.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5486-5862-5
Page Count: 362
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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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