Fans should claw at Blake’s windows for more graveyard tales after this delightful series opener.
In this horror debut, a teen outsider’s obsession with death draws him into the morbid undercurrents of a Maine town.
It’s 1985, and 17-year-old Chris Chandler and his family have just moved to Bemishstock, Maine. Chris’ father works for Allied Paper Products of Wisconsin as the man who shuts down plants and curtails the livelihoods of entire towns. This makes Chris a pariah every day in school; he visits the Willard family graveyard for solitude. One morning, after forgetting to complete a social studies project, Chris cobbles together a presentation about 19th-century grave robbers. Mallory Dahlman, the most gorgeous and popular girl in school, coincidentally delivers a project about the funeral rites of the Torajan people of Indonesia. Both reports succeed, and Mallory begins flirting with Chris wildly—enraging her jock boyfriend, Floyd Balzer. Meanwhile, teen farmhand Gillian Willard has noticed Chris repeatedly visit her family’s graveyard. She sympathizes with the loner and befriends him. Elsewhere in Bemishstock, Dr. Meath (chiropractor, goat farmer, and funeral parlor employee) has been experimenting on stolen corpses. Chris witnesses Meath’s thievery, yet he’s a bit distracted by his aggressive new girlfriend, Mallory, and her insistence that the misery of others is theirs to play with. In this gloriously macabre novel—the first installment of a series—Blake channels Stephen King and 1980s cult films like Re-Animator. He sets the miserable scene in stating “ash was the color of Bemishstock; all gray stone and unpainted, weathered wood.” Readers learn about Victorian-era fears of being buried alive when Chris says, “You could buy coffins with bells in them.” Further history delves into the existence of the Mortsafemen, who would protect the dead from grave robbers. Blake’s characters take shape briskly and enjoyably, as when the salacious Mallory tells her mother, “I think we’ve had enough dinner. I’m going to take him to my room...for dessert.” Chris’ friendship with widow Felix Holcomb is especially touching because she teaches him to treasure his teen years (“Meaning is something you only discover in a rear-view mirror”).
Fans should claw at Blake’s windows for more graveyard tales after this delightful series opener.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77127-940-6
Page Count: 290
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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