It's 34 years since The Carpetbaggers ignited Robbins's fame, but the familiar scandals, sex, and skulduggery in this late- breaking sequel have cooled to room temperature. Jonas Cord Jr., whose tumultuous relationship with his father ended lovelessly in The Carpetbaggers, by the 1950s has become the Jonas Cord—rich and powerful. Though he has an 18-year-old daughter, Jonas vows to tell his son (should he ever happen to have one) that he loves him. Surprise! Enter his bastard boy, whose mother, elegant wife of a Cuban statesman, Jonas had deflowered and then spurned when she was an ingenue. Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista—Bart for short—is already a brilliant WW II vet-Harvard- grad-lawyer-polyglot-blond-hunk when he meets Dad, who is determined to add heir and businessman to Junior's list of credits. Bart begins to dip his toe into Jonas's dealings, and before you know it he's up to his neck in Mafia-entangled hotel casino deals, entertainment industry high jinks, and messy family politics. Bart discovers that, like his father, he has a taste for sex, money, power, and conflict. So the two go head to head in round after repetitive round of nervous parent vs. rebellious adolescent: Bart has affair with actress, Dad has affair with her competition; Bart launches loser TV variety show, Dad complains he's botching the job; Bart restructures company, Dad cries sabotage; Dad tells Bart to marry longtime classy girlfriend Toni Maxim, Bart says MYOB. Appearances by such real-lifers as Jack Kennedy (with whom Toni sleeps), Che Guevera, Jimmy Hoffa, Tallulah Bankhead, and Danny Kaye add some spice and historical context. Despite clashes in arenas like the corporate shark tank and the gnarled family tree, there is not much bracing conflict here. But generous doses of heavy breathing and heaving buttocks will likely provide solace for Robbins's stalwart fans. If only the plot were as impressively hung as the men.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-87289-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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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