Enger writes in an expansive style suitable to his sprawling subject.
Set in 1886, Enger’s novel embraces not one but three journeys that involve guilt, expiation and redemption.
The first quest is that of Ulysses Pope, who lives with his wife, Gretta, and two sons, Eli and Danny. One day, Ulysses ups and disappears from their home in Sloan’s Crossing, Minnesota, leaving no note and no reason to part. For the previous year—in fact, ever since he was baptized—Gretta had noticed some strange behavior in her husband but nothing to make her think he'd leave home. Although Eli is only a teenager, he quickly decides to pursue his father to find out what happened. He tries to sneak away in the dead of night but finds that Danny has followed him; even though his brother is rather sickly, Eli lets him stay on the quest in pursuit of their father. Meanwhile, in a plot development that would reek of soap opera if it weren’t so well-handled, moneylender Mead Fogarty is putting pressure on Gretta to acknowledge that her husband has left permanently and that her best opportunity for economic survival resides with him. Eli and Danny finally catch up with their father, who, it turns out, has led something of a secret life: He was in Custer’s Indian campaign out West and committed an atrocity against an Indian family. The motive for his journey has been to try to make amends for his crime. The psychology of character deepens as, along the way, he starts to get involved in the third quest of the novel—hunting in Montana with a scientist/taxidermist from the Smithsonian who wants to kill buffalo and have them stuffed so their legacy will not be lost on future generations.
Enger writes in an expansive style suitable to his sprawling subject.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61620-375-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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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