Less a novel than a case study about a dysfunctional Texas family, Stout's latest (A Family Likeness, Eighteen Holes—not reviewed) probes the resentments and fears of a young Texas woman whose wounded feelings force her to play the martyr with her selfish husband and her blind and retarded sister. At 27, Meg is mired in domestic problems. Her two toddlers are messy and noisy. Caring for them is sunshine, however, compared with meeting the needs of her husband Stan, a philandering, strutting mechanic who is forever barking complaints. Meg hates Stan, yet she manipulates him by giving him ``all the extras'' in bed. What she wants is to have Lisbeth, her blind and retarded 28- year-old-sister, visit for Christmas. In truth, Meg cringes at the thought of caring for her huge, deformed sister, but she feels pressured by Lisbeth's state home since mother and father have recently run off, leaving no forwarding address. When Lisbeth arrives on Meg's doorstep, all grabbing hands and howling demands, with her comes a note from the state institution insisting that Lisbeth is too disturbed to come back after the holidays. Over the turkey and stuffing at Christmas dinner, everyone in Meg's family comes to see what that means: ``Then she reached down, picked up her plate, threw it against the wall behind her, and went yelling and stamping off into the family room.'' Soon after, Meg's life turns into a codependent hell. Her abusive husband walks out, and her alcoholic, irresponsible brother moves in. Meg distances people who try to help her, all the while caring for the increasingly agitated Lisbeth with grim, self-pitying resolve. In the end, she resorts to a solution that would have done her fly-by-night parents proud. Stout fails to invest the mightily handicapped Lisbeth with the smallest spark of humanity, creating a dreary, instead of moving, book.
Pub Date: April 7, 1992
ISBN: 0-939149-66-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
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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