An odd hybrid of fiction and well-known facts, mixing several points of view, none too successfully. And frequent quotes...
Pop pundit Roiphe (The Morning After, 1993, etc.) switches genres for a fictional account of the Reverend Charles Dodgson's obsession with Alice Liddell—and it's not exactly Wonderland.
The shy Oxford don gets along much better with children, especially girls, than with adults. He's unmarried, unable to come to terms with adult sexuality, still disgusted by his memories of his ever-pregnant mother’s perpetually swollen belly, the visible evidence of his father's lust. Socially inept and cursed with an incurable stutter, Dodgson isn’t much of a teacher, but the languorous young aristocrats he instructs in the finer points of logic and mathematics don't really care. All in all, he seems harmless enough, and the socially ambitious wife of the new dean sees nothing wrong with his friendship with her three young daughters. But she's puzzled: Why is the unmarried, somewhat effeminate young man so drawn to Alice, the least conventionally pretty of her offspring? The answer is hinted at in letters and extracts from Dodgson's diaries: his attraction is powerfully sexual, worshipfully loving: Alice is his heart's desire. He represses such thoughts as best he can but is plagued by nightmares in which much of the surreal imagery of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass first appears. He begins to photograph Alice in typically Victorian poses as a beggar girl, a garden nymph, and so forth, and falls more deeply in love with her each passing day. The pivotal moment: Dodgson at last dares to photograph Alice naked and is nearly crazed with erotic excitement as he watches her prance around, glorying in the power of her nudity. He later presents Alice with the pictures in secret, but Mrs. Liddell finds them. From then on, Dodgson is forever banned from all contact with the Liddell family.
An odd hybrid of fiction and well-known facts, mixing several points of view, none too successfully. And frequent quotes from Dodgson’s tenderly passionate diary entries only underscore the deficiencies in Roiphe’s own style, which is noticeably contemporary in tone—and unconvincing.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-33527-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
A steamy, glitzy, and tender tale of college intrigue.
In this opener to Kennedy’s (Hot & Bothered, 2017, etc.) Briar U romance series, two likable students keep getting their signals crossed.
Twenty-one-year-old Summer Heyward-Di Laurentis is expelled from Brown University in the middle of her junior year because she was responsible for a fire at the Kappa Beta Nu sorority house. Fortunately, her father has connections, so she’s now enrolled in Briar University, a prestigious institution about an hour outside Boston. But as she’s about to move into Briar’s Kappa Beta Nu house, she’s asked to leave by the sisters, who don’t want her besmirching their reputation. Her older brother Dean, who’s a former Briar hockey star, comes to her rescue; his buddies, who are still on the hockey team, need a fourth roommate for their townhouse. Three good-looking hockey jocks and a very rich, gorgeous fashion major under the same roof—what could go wrong? Summer becomes quickly infatuated with one of her housemates: Dean’s best friend Colin “Fitzy” Fitzgerald. There’s a definite spark between them, and they exchange smoldering looks, but the tattooed Fitzy, who’s also a video game reviewer and designer, is an introvert who prefers no “drama” in his life. Summer, however, is a charming extrovert, although she has an inferiority complex about her flagging scholastic acumen. As the story goes on, the pair seem to misinterpret each other’s every move. Meanwhile, another roommate and potential suitor, Hunter Davenport, is waiting in the wings. Kennedy’s novel is full of sex, alcohol, and college-level profanity, but it never becomes formulaic. The author adroitly employs snappy dialogue, steady pacing, and humor, as in a scene at a runway fashion show featuring Briar jocks parading in Summer-designed swimwear. The book also manages to touch on some serious subjects, including learning disabilities and abusive behavior by faculty members. Summer and Fitzy’s repeated stumbles propel the plot through engaging twists and turns; the characters trade off narrating the story, which gives each of them a chance to reveal some substance.
A steamy, glitzy, and tender tale of college intrigue.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72482-199-7
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
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