An adolescent fantasy—perhaps wet dream—of a book.
Our narrator Gates—aka Caspae, Gator and Fun Buns—is a 17 year old with a messed-up life. When he was 15, his mom had a nervous breakdown (at least we’re led to believe this was true), and renowned psychologist Alicia stepped up as his godmother to help him through the trauma. She seduced him, however, and, unbeknownst to Gates’ mother, they began a torrid affair. Meanwhile, his erstwhile girlfriend Mel is eager to lose her virginity to the somewhat willing Gates, but every time they try to get it on his guilt kicks in and he’s unable to perform. And although Gates never knew his father, Alicia and Gates’ mom have become a couple. (His mom also messes around with Stuart, a neighbor, but tries to keep this affair quiet.) Mel’s dad, a hotshot lawyer, likes to play golf at the local country club and also likes to fondle Gates (hence one of his nicknames, see above), and Mel’s mom is hot in her own right, especially after some surgery that has enhanced her bodily assets. Although only a high-school junior, Gates is a successful golf hustler, slyly messing up his game on the front nine so he can collect big time on the back. (Think Fast Eddie Felson with a golf club instead of a cue stick.) He doesn’t get to keep all the loot, however, because golf-club owner Lu—who has a propensity for fake sayings from Confucius, all with double-entendres—is able to extort money from him through various threats verging on blackmail. If anyone cares, Gates eventually finds out who his father is. The demographic for this tiresomely humorous book is essentially those who identify with the narrator—horny adolescent boys.
Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0845-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
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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