One-Eyed Mack is back: the innocent outlaw of that winsome picaresque Kick the Can (1988) is now, in the early 70's, Lieutenant-Governor of Oklahoma, defending his state against calumnies spread by TV network news. Even though he has a four-figure salary and a staff of only two, Mack is happy as a clam in his dream job, cutting ribbons, especially when the ribbons belong to Jackie-Marts, the drive-thru supermarkets pioneered by his wife Jackie. For Mack is now a devoted family man, spending long hours offering support to stepson Tommy Walt, whose pitching career in semipro ball is dying a slow, painful death. But when CBS Justice Department correspondent Archibald Tyler "discovers" a new, Oklahoma-based organized-crime group, and the Governor, Buffalo Joe—busy with his pet project to "crown Oklahoma" by putting a dome on the capitol—delegates Mack to prove the allegation is a "crock," he finds himself at the center of a political storm. With the help of C., the one-eared director of the OBI; Brother Walt, "the Greatest Holy Road Preacher in Southeast Oklahoma"; and his father, a Kansas state trooper, Mack thwarts Tyler's plan to achieve notoriety by hoodwinking his network with a made-up story; much fun is had by all, though the high jinks briefly threaten to get serious when an endearing country bus-driver is blown to bits by an out-of-state mafioso. Lehrer (co-anchor of public television's McNeil/Lehrer News Hour) has written a sequel that is every bit as genial as Kick the Can, though with less content; the premise here is thin, and Tyler never quite jells into a credible character—but that warm narrative voice, with its affection for American folkways, just about saves the day.
Pub Date: May 22, 1989
ISBN: 1571780408
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1989
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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