Religion and UFOs are fodder for an unconvincing jeremiad by Pulitzer Prizewinning syndicated columnist Anderson (The Japan Conspiracy, 1993, etc.). The human race has been deemed a failure by its intergalactic peers. One alien visits Washington, D.C., in 1999, hoping to warn the US President that the planet will soon be ``scrubbed'' of all sentient beings. After he is turned away from the White House, a gang member nicknamed Ghost knocks him out, steals his space suit and the rock he carries, and leaves him for dead. Heiress Serena Blake finds the alien with the homeless while doing volunteer work on the mall and, feeling an unexplainable affinity for this odd-looking man, names him Victor and takes him home. Ghost, hoping to get more alien devices (the ones he has have given him extraordinary persuasive powers), searches for him. Victor is also sought by Harry Lauter, a soap-box preacher who knows that the Dead Sea Scrolls predict alien visitation, and by a government agency so secret that it is unnamed. The standard MO of the agency is to infiltrate tabloids with absurd UFO stories so that actual abductees will come forward with their stories, but now it watches Harry, chases Ghost, and abducts everyone who has come in contact with Victor. They all learn of Victor's whereabouts when, through various contrivances, they spot Serena and Victor's photo in the society pages. Susan Hill, a Washington Times intern, finds Serena and Victor and enlists the help of her boss, syndicated columnist Mick Aaronson. The human race could be redeemed—if only the heroes can outwit vindictive government agents and urban youths. Victor convinces Mick to write columns that will rekindle the American spirit because, after all, if America is saved, the world is saved. A cautinary tale that adds nothing edifying to the trendy, sensationalist subject of UFOs except Anderson's own reductive views on contemporary societal ills.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-85401-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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