Starts slow but ends as a beautiful, memorable story of one family’s love and the tragic death of its patriarch.
Montandon’s first novel is a fictionalized account of his family’s happy life on their rural west Texas farm before his father’s tragic death from AIDS.
The author’s father, Eugene “Doc” Montandon, was subjected to unnecessary surgery in the early 1980s; many years later, shortly before his death, the family discovers that Doc was infected with HIV-positive blood as a result of the procedure. The hospital never informed the Montandon family of its error and even refused to treat Doc as a patient. By the time the family found out, Doc was in the advanced stages of the disease. Although quite touching and emotional, the story of Doc’s disease, death, and resulting emotional and spiritual toll on the family comprises only the latter half of Montandon’s volume. The first portion is dedicated to family history. These recollections set the stage and build characterization before the tragedy starts to unfold, but some readers may be anxious for the action to kick off. If this book were restructured—bringing Doc’s story to the forefront while weaving anecdotes throughout the entire text—the poignancy of this title might resonate more with readers. The story of Doc’s treatment, death, and everything that follows is captivating. As it revisits a time when people were shamefully refused treatment for AIDS, the book chronicles the early stages of American society’s understanding of this disease and presents a grim picture of the ignorance and the intolerance to which early patients were subjected. The impact of Doc’s death on the author is clear, and he describes Doc’s final days with an intensity and passion that will affect readers.
Starts slow but ends as a beautiful, memorable story of one family’s love and the tragic death of its patriarch.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615604831
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Rockford Brownstone Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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