An intriguing but uneven tale involving the murder of a patriarch.
This debut historical novel chronicles a boy’s journey from his childhood home to an orphanage and the chain of events that leads him to change his name.
Stanley William Puchalski’s mother wakes him early one fall morning in 1920 in Southington, Ohio, to send him on the most urgent errand of his life—fetch the sheriff to investigate his father’s murder. It seems that a group of men broke into the family’s farmhouse to steal some money and shot the boy’s father, George, in his bedroom. Things haven’t always gone smoothly on the family farm. George was a harsh taskmaster for all the hands working there, even his wife, Stella, and young Stanley as well as the boy’s brothers and sister. All their hard work made George a well-off patriarch, but he didn’t share the rewards. He got drunk constantly and subjected his family to endless bursts of violent abuse. As the oldest son, Stanley wished he could step in, but he was too young to stand against Papa’s fury. That fateful evening, the boy heard a sharp crack in the middle of the night. Once the police arrive, Stella’s story starts to make less and less sense. The timing’s off, the supposed thieves sound a lot like family relatives, and there’s no trace of their car leaving the farm. And when Stella is arrested for the murder of her husband, there’s no one left to take care of Stanley and his siblings. The kids are put in the County Children’s Home, an orphanage in an old mansion, and the cruel caretakers and older bullies make the place seem like little improvement over life on the farm. In this novel based on his family’s history, Miller writes about his grandfather in a dramatic, vivid manner and a shifting third-person perspective. The author offers readers a fast-paced, cinematic tale that covers Stanley’s travails—which include changing his last name to Miller at the age of 13 and working in a Chicago steel mill—rather than a sober, minutiae-filled biography. Unfortunately, the book’s descriptive style is sometimes overwrought, which makes the prose sound overenthusiastic (“Her wavy chestnut curls flow softly in the gentle breeze, kissed by the afternoon sunlight creating shimmers of auburn highlights in her hair”).
An intriguing but uneven tale involving the murder of a patriarch.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-53161-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This novel began as a reworking of W.W. Jacobs' horror classic "The Monkey's Paw"—a short story about the dreadful outcome when a father wishes for his dead son's resurrection. And King's 400-page version reads, in fact, like a monstrously padded short story, moving so slowly that every plot-turn becomes lumberingly predictable. Still, readers with a taste for the morbid and ghoulish will find unlimited dark, mortality-obsessed atmosphere here—as Dr. Louis Creed arrives in Maine with wife Rachel and their two little kids Ellie and Gage, moving into a semi-rural house not far from the "Pet Sematary": a spot in the woods where local kids have been burying their pets for decades. Louis, 35, finds a great new friend/father-figure in elderly neighbor Jud Crandall; he begins work as director of the local university health-services. But Louis is oppressed by thoughts of death—especially after a dying student whispers something about the pet cemetery, then reappears in a dream (but is it a dream) to lead Louis into those woods during the middle of the night. What is the secret of the Pet Sematary? Well, eventually old Jud gives Louis a lecture/tour of the Pet Sematary's "annex"—an old Micmac burying ground where pets have been buried. . .and then reappeared alive! So, when little Ellie's beloved cat Church is run over (while Ellie's visiting grandfolks), Louis and Jud bury it in the annex—resulting in a faintly nasty resurrection: Church reappears, now with a foul smell and a creepy demeanor. But: what would happen if a human corpse were buried there? That's the question when Louis' little son Gage is promptly killed in an accident. Will grieving father Louis dig up his son's body from the normal graveyard and replant it in the Pet Sematary? What about the stories of a previous similar attempt—when dead Timmy Baterman was "transformed into some sort of all-knowing daemon?" Will Gage return to the living—but as "a thing of evil?" He will indeed, spouting obscenities and committing murder. . .before Louis must eliminate this child-demon he has unleashed. Filled out with overdone family melodrama (the feud between Louis and his father-in-law) and repetitious inner monologues: a broody horror tale that's strong on dark, depressing chills, weak on suspense or surprise—and not likely to please the fans of King's zestier, livelier terror-thons.
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1983
ISBN: 0743412281
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
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