Less a novel than a listmaking—of clothes, of beaches, of screamingly obvious observations.
Oh no! I’ve graduated from Columbia and have no skills! Rent is high! Wait, bartending could be fun. . .
It’s official: New York is played out. The pavement has been so thoroughly pounded by legions of eager young novelistas that not a shred of inspiration seems to be left. The ne plus ultra of reductive formula (cute everygirl/insecurity/sassy best friend/designer labels) is this one, written by a pair of best friend/bartenders with writerly aspirations. It’s not really a novel, being plotless, and its characters being more easily differentiated by their clothes than their personalities. It’s really a long whine about how hard it is to be good-looking and college-educated, with friends and loving family, not to mention a great postgrad career bartending in downtown Manhattan and a ludicrously hip Hamptons nightclub. That’s the dilemma faced by blander-than-bland Cassie, who leaves Columbia with a yen for screenwriting that her parents won’t kick in any more funds for and so gets into liquor-slinging. Cassie seems to be good behind the bar, which is lucky since her writing lacks a little something: “There are so many lost souls drifting around Manhattan, and they all seem to gravitate towards bars. It’s a lot to deal with at 4:30 in the morning.” There’s some business with a Hamptons preppie whom Cassie starts dating but who seems embarrassed to be seen around someone of her class, not to mention reams of scarcely needed information about the ins and outs of bartending.
Less a novel than a listmaking—of clothes, of beaches, of screamingly obvious observations.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7679-1849-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
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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