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IDEAS ABOVE OUR STATION

Name: IDEAS ABOVE OUR STATION
Author: Ian Daley
ISBN: 978-1-901927-28-3

STORIES

edited by Ian Daley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2008

There’s more chaff than wheat in this uneven book.

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A collection of 15 short and rough-edged stories, first published in the U.K.

The contributing writers were asked to pen stories that would make good travel reading. The editor favors first-person narrators, some of whom just want to vent. There’s the female attendant in an underground restroom (“In Attendance,” by Paula Rawsthorne), who, after losing home and husband, lives illegally in a supply closet; the tale’s grimness feels self-indulgent. Almost as grim but much more lively is the Asian-British cab driver’s situation in M.Y. Alam’s “Taxi Driver”; he’s working in a part of Yorkshire unsettled by the arrest of terror suspects. The young widow in Tania Hershman’s “On a Roll,” rather than bemoaning her fate, actually has a story to tell, and it’s a good one, about a dream on a transatlantic flight and its outcome in a Vegas casino. Another engaging story, the cream of the crop, is Sophie Hannah’s “Always Swing Upright.” Sonia is traveling by train to give a lecture on happiness; her eventful journey will reveal that, for her, the greatest rush comes from an act of pure folly. Far less successful are the portraits of a lesbian, consumed by airport angst, waiting for the return of her lover (“Missing You,” by Rosa Ainley), and the addled museum ticket clerk with a whimsical project (“Aubrey,” by Alexis Clements). The third-person narratives don’t fare well either. The meeting between biological father and the son he gave up for adoption in “Side Exit,” by Daithidh MacEochaidh, is too heavy-handed, as is Nathan Ramsden’s “The Categories of Ernest Bookbinder,” about a man headed for the asylum. The husband and wife whose marriage is breaking up in Penny Aldred’s “It’s a Hard Rain,” meanwhile, are too generic. Hats off, though, to Anthony Cropper; his very short “Love of Fate,” almost all dialogue, is a perfect snapshot of a small boy and one of his mother’s lovers enjoying each other’s company.

There’s more chaff than wheat in this uneven book.

Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-901927-28-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Dufour

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.