Picoult's mediocre third novel (after Harvesting the Heart, 1993) features dysfunctional parents, an abusive spouse, romantic anthropological visits to Africa, and a healing encounter with sensitive Native Americans. Like the layers of earth she sifts through to find a piece of bone, protagonist Cassie Barrett, a noted anthropologist teaching at UCLA, must dig deep into her own past to understand just what happened before she lost her memory due to a blow on the head. Found wandering on Sunset Boulevard by Will Flying Horse, a recent LAPD recruit and South Dakota native who has fled life on the reservation, Cassie soon recalls her profession but has to be reminded by Alex Rivers, Hollywood's hottest property, that she's his wife. Alex, an Oscar nominee and soon-to-be winner, is stunningly handsome, talented, and messed-up—something Cassie has also forgotten. Cassie loves Alex passionately, she is sure of that, but both of them are haunted by horrible childhoods, which have made Cassie a lifelong rescuer and Alex a perpetual victim. When Cassie finally remembers why she lost her memory (Alex beat her savagely), she flees to South Dakota, where she imposes on Will's grandparents while she finds herself and awaits the baby she now remembers she is expecting. There, Cassie recalls her alcoholic parents, a murdered childhood friend, her romantic meeting with Alex on location in Africa, their exciting life together, and her continuing great love for her husband. She goes back to him after the baby is born, but Alex can't change, and Cassie can: She must hurt him so he can heal. A pretentious romance for the '90s that combines up-to-the- minute neuroses and Tinseltown glitz in a formula plot that ought to be foolproof but somehow isn't, despite patches of good writing. (Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: March 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14040-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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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