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OUT OF MY SKIN

Name: OUT OF MY SKIN
Author: John Haskell
ISBN: 978-0-374-29909-5

by John Haskell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 10, 2009

A premise that could prove provocative and funny in a short story turns tiresome when stretched into a novel.

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A metafictional narrative from Haskell (American Purgatorio, 2004, etc.).

This short novel concerns a writer from New York who has transplanted himself to Los Angeles (the author’s bio informs that he splits time between the two cities) and who apparently has the last name of “Haskell.” The writer takes an assignment to write a feature article about a Steve Martin impersonator, and he becomes so intrigued by the process of inhabiting another’s identity that he starts impersonating Martin. Haskell proceeds to cover well-trod territory, offering meditations on identity in a city where everyone seems to be pretending to be somebody else. The writer meets his girlfriend after she pretends to be a photographer to capture his interest. But it may only be his Martin dimension that attracts her. His thoughts keep returning to examples of actors who transformed their identities, including the married Charles Laughton, who disguised his homosexuality, and Marlon Brando, who pretended to be a youthful motorcycle rebel when he was 35. We get it: Hollywood is illusion, a place where a New York writer can transform himself into someone else. “I’d detached who I was from the web that had organized my world,” he says, though it becomes increasingly more difficult to sustain interest in the first-person narration when the “I” is less a coherent self than a cipher.

A premise that could prove provocative and funny in a short story turns tiresome when stretched into a novel.

Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-374-29909-5

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE COMPLETE BALLET
by John Haskell

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN PURGATORIO
by John Haskell

- BOOK REVIEW
I AM NOT JACKSON POLLOCK
by John Haskell

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.