In his second novel (the first not published here), Dubliner Hamilton cannily interlaces a brace of bittersweet, doomed love affairs four decades apart. The narration alternates in time periods—between the close of WW II, when the Germans evacuate a small town in Czechoslovakia, and the 1980's, when an American man returns to Germany and Czechoslovakia to a passionate affair with his best friend's wife and also to search through the past for some missing days—in May 1945. Radio technician Franz Kern suggested to Bertha Sommer, the only German woman working at the Reich's garrison in the village of Laun in occupied Czechoslovakia, that the time had come to think about escape home before the inevitable approach of the victorious Russians and the end of the war. The first try goes awry in the rain, but at the evacuation, Kern and Sommer take to bicycles they've wisely acquired and—among the flow of refugees (from both East and West)—they toil on, finally taking to the hills. In days of fatigue, hope, and sharing, the two become friends and then, in an idyll by a sweet and serene isolated lake, become lovers—while two starving, violent, homeless men watch. A last shot is fired at the height of violence. There will be a homecoming, but passion has been spent. In the 1980's, an American from Vermont renews an affair with beautiful Anke, wife of best friend Jurgen. The couple's Down's syndrome small son is dying of leukemia. Fevered with approaching loss, Anke turns to her old love. In the meantime, the American is searching for...Franz Kern. A shrewd and effective meld of adventure, pockets of dreamy romance and passion, plus a spattering of cynical comments about the ``freedom'' within the united Germany—all touched with a faint dramatic melancholy.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-18404-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
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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