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KATA'S FATHER

Name: KATA'S FATHER
Author: John M. Zurak
ISBN: 978-0-9971748-0-9

A BOSNIAN NOVEL

by John M. Zurak ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2016

A sprawling fable that illuminates Bosnian culture and history through unique, multidimensional characters.

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This magical realist debut novel explores a family’s connection to the mountains of post–World War II Bosnia.

Mijo Pavlović’s young son, Mirko, says that a bee “bit” him during a winter night, but despite the narrator’s insistence, Mijo doesn’t believe it’s one of the fairylike “Wisps” that nip children and give them “dreams that stir the soul.” Zurak’s first-person omniscient narrator initially and charmingly evokes an old-fashioned storyteller—“But alas, we who they visit cannot hear them”—but this technique is later dropped. Years later, when Mirko is drafted into Communist Yugoslavia’s navy, he doesn’t understand “why [his family members] would want to stop him” from sailing the world, so he leaves home angrily. His 13-year-old brother, Mato, must now support the family, and he runs 20 miles to and from the steel mill each day. One night, “demons of the forest” attack him, and he climbs a magical tree that becomes a lifelong sanctuary. When Mato is 16, the pretty, talented Verka brightens his outlook, and the troubled Mirko, newly returned from service, attempts to gain her affections. Only when Mato faces impending military service does Mirko confess his own horrific war experiences. Mato listens, and during his military years he writes home: “There’s a beautiful price in doing [Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz] Tito’s most beautiful work.” When Mato finally returns to his family (including his daughter, the titular but oddly unimportant Kata), Mijo offers his son “a gift,” in a speech that borders on preachy. Soon, Mato decides to battle his demons literally, in ways that don’t quite fit with the novel’s fabulist tone. That said, Zurak’s prose sparkles with memorable characters and images, as well as some graceful lines, such as “Nations remember peace like your stomach remembers being full.” Further editorial polishing to eliminate repetition, clunky dialogue (“Oh, you got me. Wow!”), and syntactical and punctuation errors would have increased this ambitious novel’s impact.

A sprawling fable that illuminates Bosnian culture and history through unique, multidimensional characters.

Pub Date: July 12, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-9971748-0-9

Page Count: 332

Publisher: Hullabaloo Bookery

Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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

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Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

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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.