The first US appearance of a bestselling Puerto Rican debut novel, originally published in 1986, that tries hard for significance as it evokes close family ties. It's the 1950s, and precociously observant Lydia, the narrator, lives with her mother, brother, two unmarried aunts, and grandmother, Mama Sara, in an old house in a middle-class neighborhood. Her father died in WW II, and though uncles and male cousins are frequent visitors in this close-knit group, the women are in charge—until Uncle Sergio suddenly returns from New York. The family, including Sergio, discuss politics (they are divided evenly between nationalists and anticommunist pro-Americans); their Spanish forebears; and the changes taking place on the island as the American influence grows. But Uncle Sergio, meanwhile, is an intriguing mystery to the children, especially to Lydia, who eavesdrops on adult conversations to find out more about him; asks leading questions; and later observes a disturbing sexual encounter between him and the family maid. Uncle Sergio, more suggested than realized, adds a masculine and intellectual dimension to a ``life simply measured by schooldays, vacations and religious holidays.'' Though he returns to New York to continue his political work, he's responsible, the narrator claims, for changing her life: ``...before you arrived I could clearly identify the scents I like best...then I began to like your scent....later...others would be lying on top of me, but I would only be under you, always with you, only you inside, only your smell and your truth.'' Because of him, she says, she discovered her Puerto Rican identity—an identity that gave her and her family ``cohesion.'' One of those finely wrought but lifeless first novels that overflow with texture and period detail but shortchange their characters.
Pub Date: June 15, 1995
ISBN: 1-877727-52-0
Page Count: 164
Publisher: White Pine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
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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