This sweet but thin academic tattle-tale by Jackson, the pseudonym for, according to the publisher, an “acclaimed short...
The classrooms and boardrooms of an elite Manhattan prep school are plumbed for plot and pathos.
Troubles are piling up for Kathryn “Lazy” Hoffman, headmistress of Griffin School, grades K-12. She just turned 43, a fact of life she’s dismayed about. She’s not allowed to smoke in her office, which she perceives as an affront to her authority. She feels guilty about cheating on her loving husband with one of Griffin’s teachers, the handsome, WASP-y Doug McNamee, who calls her his “Jewish Princess.” Even worse, it’s “early admission notification time,” so students’ mothers are threatening suicide if their offspring are not admitted to Harvard or Yale. Finally, the mother of senior Morgan Goldfine, a generous benefactor to Griffin, succumbs after a long battle with cancer. Somehow Lazy has to transport 99 students to the funeral. Lazy isn’t the only member of the Griffin community with tribulations, however. In alternating short chapters, four other main characters reveal their plights: Julianne, the go-to friend of troubled teens, who not only has her grief-stricken best friend Morgan to console but must also reassure Michael, her increasingly paranoid, handsome, intelligent, bi-polar and off-his-meds boyfriend, of her undying love; Julianne’s mother Dee, the author of seven critically acclaimed, minimally sold novels who now drives a cab and watches helplessly as Julianne gets drawn into Michael’s madness; Susan, Michael’s mother, an aloof society matron whose greatest pleasure is sewing costumes for Boyfriend, her Chinese Crested Hairless dog, and who has no idea how to cope with her son; and Morgan, who sends late-night emails into the ether, hoping that her mother will reply. As richer, more powerful egos threaten these flawed but sincere heroines, each woman must come to terms with her own choices.
This sweet but thin academic tattle-tale by Jackson, the pseudonym for, according to the publisher, an “acclaimed short story writer,” fails to punish the wicked or reward the just.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2007
ISBN: 0-312-36389-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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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