Undemanding and very tame fare that avoids offending anyone.
In the sixth in Medlicott’s series about lively senior citizens in Covington, N.C. (At Home in Covington, 2004, etc.), the new pastor overcomes a couple of crises with help from the local ladies.
Although they show up when needed, Hannah, Grace and especially Amelia take a less prominent role here than they have previously. Young Pastor Denny Ledbetter has taken over the local congregation to relieve the ailing Pastor Johnson, who for years acted as a father surrogate to the orphaned Denny and paid his way through seminary. While cleaning out the church attic with Grace, Denny discovers proof that 40 years earlier, the church briefly employed an un-ordained minister who performed five marriage ceremonies for which he never filed the proper papers. As a result, five of the community’s longest-married couples are not really married in the eyes of God. After some soul-searching, Denny breaks the news to the couples. The Herrills and the Craines, both upstanding members of the community, soon agree that holding a joint wedding ceremony on Christmas Eve would be a lovely way to renew their vows. The other three couples, all from a less genteel part of town, take some convincing, but eventually they too agree to be part of the ceremony—even poor Mary McCorkle, whose marriage has been less than happy. Now a new crisis arises—the sorry disrepair into which the church building has fallen. While the ladies light a fire under the men folk to help Denny refurbish the church, a mysterious visitor from France underwrites a new furnace, but will it be installed in time? Don’t worry too much; suspense is not a high priority for Medlicott, who designs her tales for comfort above all else.
Undemanding and very tame fare that avoids offending anyone.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7434-9921-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
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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