WHITE TRASH

Name: WHITE TRASH
Author: John King
ISBN: 0-09-928306-9

by John King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2003

Genuinely engrossing and utterly creepy, but White Trash suffers badly from a two-dimensional villain (an agitprop meanie...

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Depressing fable of 21st-century Britain takes us inside the warped and febrile mind of a free-market psychopath—in this first US appearance for English author King.

Jonathan Jeffreys is the sort of upper-class villain we’ve met before in the novels of Bret Easton Ellis or films of Mike Leigh: nihilistic, demented, well-connected, well-dressed, and utterly devoid of conscience. A management consultant who specializes in hospital administration, Jeffreys serves as a government inspector, evaluating the efficiency of various hospital facilities and programs. Although he despises unions and looks down on the lower classes as ignorant rabble, Jeffreys is suavely diplomatic and manages to inspire trust and even a kind of affection in the underpaid workers whose jobs he sets out to eliminate. One of these is Ruby James, a nurse at one of the hospitals Jeffreys has come to streamline. Like most of the hospital staff, Ruby sees Jeffreys only as a quiet and polite man who works extremely long hours and keeps largely to himself. It doesn’t occur to her to wonder whether there has been a noticeable increase in patient deaths since Jeffreys arrived, or whether there’s anything unusual in his wandering through remote wards by himself late at night. When Ron Dawes, a retired union organizer whom Ruby looked after in her ward, dies somewhat suddenly one night, Jeffreys makes a point of consoling Ruby (who had grown fond of the old guy). But how much comfort is there in the condolences of a man who, as a child, used to torture his pet dog and likes to relax by urinating into the mouths of prostitutes? And will Ruby be able to sense threat before it turns into full-fledged danger?

Genuinely engrossing and utterly creepy, but White Trash suffers badly from a two-dimensional villain (an agitprop meanie who could have been named Mr. Capitalist), as well as from the colorless normal characters who oppose him.

Pub Date: April 15, 2003

ISBN: 0-09-928306-9

Page Count: 356

Publisher: Vintage UK/Trafalgar

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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PORTAL
by John King

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THE CALL OF THE TRIBE
by Mario Vargas Llosa ; translated by John King

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NOTES ON THE DEATH OF CULTURE
by Mario Vargas Llosa edited by John King translated by John King

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.