Nine linked stories by East Village novelist Estep (Diary of an Emotional Idiot, 1997), who tries to milk fresh narrative out of the dried-up cow of Downtown counterculture. After a few pages, everyone here is as recognizable as bachelor uncles at a family reunion—and not just because Estep shuffles the same half-dozen characters into the deck from which she deals each story. In “Horses,” for example, a circus clown falls in love with Katie, the lion-tamer’s daughter, but loses her when she moves to New York to become a photographer. In “The Patient,” we meet Jody (who had once dated Katie’s father), a prodigiously oversexed psychiatrist who drives her boyfriend to near-suicide by making him impregnate an elderly lesbian. Joe, the narrator of “Circus,” meets Katie, and the two carry on until Joe pulls a reverse Katie and abandons her for a circus job. Meanwhile, in “Teeth,” Jody seduces one of her patients by masturbating during his session but dumps him when he refuses to sleep with a whore she brings home. Kate’s sister Alfie is a lesbian bike messenger who sometimes sleeps with Indio, a guy from work (“The Messenger”). Jack, the patient Jody dumped in “Teeth,” starts screwing around with Katie in “Animals.” Jack is a petty criminal who’s into Caravaggio and gets jealous when Katie decides to go on a yachting expedition with an ex-boyfriend (“Monkeys”). Last, in “One of Us,” Jody herself is institutionalized, having married Toby (another of her patients) and been driven crazy trying to adopt the baby that her elderly lesbian friend gave birth to shortly before her death. Which is all very sad. Probably. Pomo angst that seems far more transparent than transgressive, written in the kind of faux-blasÇ prose (“I had a rambling apartment in Brooklyn and I fucked my girlfriend Jody in every part of it”) that would make Henry Miller think it was written by kids.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-86333-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
Lunge-Larsen and Preus debut with this story of a flower that blooms for the first time to commemorate the uncommon courage of a girl who saves her people from illness. The girl, an Ojibwe of the northern woodlands, knows she must journey to the next village to get the healing herb, mash-ki- ki, for her people, who have all fallen ill. After lining her moccasins with rabbit fur, she braves a raging snowstorm and crosses a dark frozen lake to reach the village. Then, rather than wait for morning, she sets out for home while the villagers sleep. When she loses her moccasins in the deep snow, her bare feet are cut by icy shards, and bleed with every step until she reaches her home. The next spring beautiful lady slippers bloom from the place where her moccasins were lost, and from every spot her injured feet touched. Drawing on Ojibwe sources, the authors of this fluid retelling have peppered the tale with native words and have used traditional elements, e.g., giving voice to the forces of nature. The accompanying watercolors, with flowing lines, jewel tones, and decorative motifs, give stately credence to the story’s iconic aspects. (Picture book/folklore. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90512-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
Fans weary of King's recent unwieldy tomes can rest easy: his newest is slim, slick, and razor-keen. His first novel without supernatural elements outside of the Richard Bachman series, this psychological terror tale laced with pitch-black humor tells the nerve-jangling story of a best-selling author kidnapped and tortured by his "number one fan." King opens on a disorienting note as writer Paul Sheldon drifts awake to find himself in bed, his legs shattered. A beefy woman, 40-ish Annie Wilkes, appears and feeds him barbiturates. During the hazy next week, Paul learns that Annie, an ex-nurse, carried him from a car wreck to her isolated house, where she plans to keep him indefinitely. She's a spiteful misanthrope subject to catatonic fits, but worships Paul because he writes her favorite books, historical novels featuring the heroine "Misery." As Annie pumps him with drugs and reads the script of his latest novel, also saved from the wreck, Paul waits with growing apprehension—he killed off Misery in this new one. tn time, Annie rushes into the room, howling: she demands that Paul write a new novel resurrecting Misery just for her. He refuses until she threatens to withhold his drugs; so he begins the book (tantalizing chunks of which King seeds throughout this novel). Days later, when Annie goes to town, Paul, who's now in a wheelchair, escapes his locked room and finds a scrapbook with clippings of Annie's hobby: she's a mass-murderer. Up to here, King has gleefully slathered on the tension: now he slams on the shocks as Annie returns swinging an axe and chops off Paul's foot. Soon after, off comes his thumb; when a cop looking for Paul shows up, Annie lawnmowers his head. Burning for revenge, Paul finishes his novel, only to use the manuscript as a weapon against his captor in the ironic, ferocious climax. Although lacking the psychological richness of his best work, this nasty shard of a novel with its weird autobiographical implications probably will thrill and chill King's legion of fans. Note: the publisher plans an unprecedented first printing of one-million copies.
Pub Date: June 8, 1987
ISBN: 0451169522
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1987
BOOK TO SCREEN
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