A sequel to the delightful Rookery Blues (1995), from the popular Minnesota author. The story is once again set in the academic hinterland of Rookery State College. It's 25 years later (1994), and the focus is now on the professional and personal crises stoically endured by Leland Edwards, who at 58 still lives with his octogenarian mother ``Lolly'' (the host of a popular call-in radio show) and still remembers with more than affection his ex-wife Sally and the son they lost in childhood many years earlier. This all sounds depressing, and there's no doubt that the novel exhibits too many characters burdened by what one of them calls his ``overload of worries.'' But Hassler's trademark affectionate humor is manifest throughout, as Leland deals with neurotic students and eccentric relatives, a Machiavellian hockey coach, a dim-witted college president (who thinks the legendary Paul Bunyan is a Rookery graduate), a sexual harassment charge brought against him by a disturbed woman, and, centrally, the campus visit of a real Rookery alumnus, celebrated poet Richard Falcon—who is himself besieged by the IRS, a publisher's lawsuit, and assorted other demons. Hassler weaves these complicated materials (and others) together beautifully. After a hundred pages or so, we realize we've become acquainted with an amazing number of characters, most of whose personalities are rendered in distinctive detail, even when they're only walk-ons. Flashbacks to Leland's marriage and bereavement, and to his days as a jazz pianist with the cheerfully embattled Icejam Quintet (whose other members all eventually reappear here), are expertly blended with present action. And Hassler's creation of the poems of Richard Falcon—who's a kind of amalgam of Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson—is remarkably skillful. Enormously readable, as sentimental as one might wish it to be: another dependable charmer from one of our most likable and entertaining novelists. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 28, 1997
ISBN: 0-345-41637-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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