Taut, fast-paced work from an author who knows as much about writing fiction as he does about the fiction biz.
A couple of literary legends get turned inside-out, revealing both the passions and the pitfalls of the writing life, in this debut roman à clef, set deep inside the New York publishing demimonde.
It's been seven years since Kyle Clayton made his Brett Easton Ellis–like literary debut at the age of 25, and he hasn’t written a word since. More than just down-and-out, alcoholic Clayton’s first waking image these days is more often the cool toilet bowl he fell asleep clutching, rather than some hot young thing. His fame is diminishing, the advances on his second book have dried up, and his only support is the monthly check—for gigolo services—from a well-preserved literary patroness. Having his own nervous breakdown is 60-ish, impotent Richard Whitehurst, the proverbial writer’s writer whose recent opus, ten years in the making, garnered great critical acclaim before sinking into obscurity and onto the remainder tables. But opposites attract. When the two meet at a PEN party, where Whitehurst verbally attacks a Stephen Spender stand-in and Clayton delivers a Mailer-esque knockdown to a contemporary, sparks fly. They complete each other, and in no time Clayton moves, for the summer, into Whitehurst and his wife Meryl’s Sag Harbor home. Clayton sobers up, the men embark on new novels, and 40-something Meryl, busting out of her brassiere, gardens. Here, the story really takes off as Wenzel lays outs one tension after another. Will Clayton stay sober? What does Whitehurst need from Clayton? Will the Whitehursts’ marriage survive? Wenzel expertly guides the narrative as the characters slide out of control, bringing the summer and the story to a close that is surprising, violent, and disturbing.
Taut, fast-paced work from an author who knows as much about writing fiction as he does about the fiction biz.Pub Date: July 24, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50551-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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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