As characterized here, Becky doesn’t earn the equal time she clamors for.
A supporting character in Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer gets her own novel.
Reviewing her past at 70, Becky Thatcher means to set the record straight. She wasn’t the prissy crybaby portrayed in her old schoolmate Sam Clemens’s bestselling book. She wasn’t just rascally Tom Sawyer’s schoolyard crush—she was his lover and the mother of his child. She was a tomboy who snuck out at night to tail Tom and Huck Finn on their mischief missions around Hannibal, Mo. And Clemens got it wrong about that graveyard murder. Muff Potter, not Injun Joe, was the culprit, and Becky’s first rupture with Tom happened because he inculpated Joe. Grown-up Becky marries Tom’s cousin Sid. Tom pilots riverboats and Huck skulks around Hannibal, a human cipher. When Sid enlists to fight, and Missouri is ravaged by Civil War shortages and marauding gangs, Becky helps her father, Judge Thatcher, escape arrest for treason. Her infant son Tyler has died, leaving only Gage, her son conceived in a tryst with Tom—a secret she withholds from Sid. Dressing as a soldier, Becky follows the troops and rescues Sid. On their return to Hannibal they witness a steamboat explosion in which Tom is lost. The couple head west to join the Nevada gold rush. Sid discovers a rich silver vein, but is killed by vigilantes. Now a wealthy widow, Becky journeys with Gage and her new daughter by Sid to San Francisco. Encouraged by Sam, she becomes a newspaperwoman. But Becky still yearns for Tom and regrets deceiving Sid. A telegraph from Hannibal reveals that Tom is alive, but desperately ill in Panama, where he and Huck had gone for their latest adventure. Becky must follow them one last time. Feisty Becky and charismatic Tom are still, in Hart’s retelling, unable to transcend their Twain-fostered public images. Huck’s best friends ultimately appear to be as unknowable as he is.
As characterized here, Becky doesn’t earn the equal time she clamors for.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-37327-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
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
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...
A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-59416-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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