Clearly tale-spinning comes easily to Joan Aiken, who is adept at retracing traditional patterns with a knowing contemporary air, but most of these 13 entries (12 short stories and a poem) seem mere imitations of sentimental fairy tales, wonder tales, or whatever; and the evident fact that Aiken's stance is more sophisticated than her models' doesn't add dimension. In the sentimental vein, the lollybird of the title story is a weaver's overworked assistant who flies off to teach its now bereft master a lesson; elsewhere an old man gives his life for a loyal dog's ghost; another giving tree gives her all as a prince's foster mother; and a music-loving cat enlists the mice and birds of Venice to save an ailing, imprisoned (human) composer. Other stories, more purely in fun, deal with a king whose "backward" memory of past Sundays is replaced by a "forward" memory of future ones; with a sailor who escapes a shrewish wife for a charming mermaid; and—for those who can take the barrage of bubbles—with "how a lost football team came to be connected with the seven thoughtful magpies of Rumbury Cemetery, and what that had to do with John Sculpin's fondness for Carpathian Puff Pastry, and his mother's for auction sales, and how his cousin Sue and her pet carp came into the business, not to mention the ferocious Count Gradko and a cloud shaped like a polar bear." Deft, inventive—but only exercises.
Pub Date: April 7, 1978
ISBN: 0224013327
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1978
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An improvement over The Dead Zone, with King returning to his most tried-and-true blueprint. As in The Shining, the psi-carrier is a child, an eight-year-old girl named Charlie; but instead of foresight or hindsight, Charlie has firestarting powers. She looks and a thing pops into flame—a teddy bear, a nasty man's shoes, or (by novel's end) steel walls, whole houses, and stables and crowds of government villains. Charlie's parents Vicky and Andy were once college guinea pigs for drug experiments by The Shop, a part of the supersecret Department of Scientific Intelligence, and were given a hyperpowerful hallucinogen which affected their chromosomes and left each with strange powers of mental transference and telekinesis. When Vicky and Andy married, their genes produced Charlie and her wild talent for pyrokinesis: even as a baby in her crib, Charlie would start fires when upset and, later on, once set her mother's hands on fire. So Andy is trying to teach Charlie how to keep her volatile emotions in check. But when one day he comes home to find Vicky gruesomely dead in the ironing-board-closet, murdered by The Shop (all the experimental guinea pigs are being eliminated), Andy goes into hiding with Charlie in Manhattan and the Vermont backwoods—and Charlie uses her powers to set the bad men on fire and blow up their cars. They're soon captured, however, by Rainbird, a one-eyed giant Indian with a melted face—and father and daughter, separated, spend months being tested in The Shop. Then Andy engineers their escape, but when Andy is shot by Rainbird, Charlie turns loose her atomic eyes on the big compound. . . . Dumb, very, and still a far cry from the excitement of The Shining or Salem's Lot—but King keeps the story moving with his lively fire-gimmick and fewer pages of cotton padding than in his recent, sluggish efforts. The built-in readership will not be disappointed.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1980
ISBN: 0451167805
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An extremely powerful story of a young Southern Negro, from his late high school days through three years of college to his life in Harlem.
His early training prepared him for a life of humility before white men, but through injustices- large and small, he came to realize that he was an "invisible man". People saw in him only a reflection of their preconceived ideas of what he was, denied his individuality, and ultimately did not see him at all. This theme, which has implications far beyond the obvious racial parallel, is skillfully handled. The incidents of the story are wholly absorbing. The boy's dismissal from college because of an innocent mistake, his shocked reaction to the anonymity of the North and to Harlem, his nightmare experiences on a one-day job in a paint factory and in the hospital, his lightning success as the Harlem leader of a communistic organization known as the Brotherhood, his involvement in black versus white and black versus black clashes and his disillusion and understanding of his invisibility- all climax naturally in scenes of violence and riot, followed by a retreat which is both literal and figurative. Parts of this experience may have been told before, but never with such freshness, intensity and power.
This is Ellison's first novel, but he has complete control of his story and his style. Watch it.
Pub Date: April 7, 1952
ISBN: 0679732764
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1952
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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