Although the plot is a bit overfamiliar, Schuster does a fine job in maintaining Audrey’s aura of denial even as she plunges...
A suburban single mother of two juggles her motherly responsibilities, the editorship of a local paper and a growing addiction to cocaine.
This debut novel by English teacher and pop commentator Schuster (The Greatest Show in the Galaxy: The Discerning Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who, 2007, etc.) aims a pointedly jaundiced eye at American consumerism. It acidly portrays the modern American family through the eyes of a matriarch transformed—not necessarily negatively—by her addiction to drugs. Audrey Corcoran is trying to get by in a world that’s been turned upside-down by her acrimonious divorce from her husband Roger, whose vivacious girlfriend Chloe causes Audrey no end of jealous exasperation. Her oldest daughter is reaching the age of teenaged resentment, while her precocious younger daughter more closely resembles a sophisticated teenager than the 8-year-old she is. On top of it all, Audrey supports the whole family with her gig in a dead-end job as the editor of a glorified restaurant review whose stock in trade is more of a complex barter system than functional business. So perhaps it’s no wonder that when Audrey begins dating Owen Little, the hipster owner of a local dive, she begins to feel some pangs of temptation. “Maybe I let it slip that a girl could always change her mind,” Audrey muses. “Maybe I mentioned that even though no always meant no, there was always room for negotiation. Maybe I gave Owen the impression that I was open to trying coke just once, just out of curiosity, just to see if it would do anything for me.” It’s not too many bumps later before Audrey realizes that her overcomplicated life is made much easier through chemical acceleration, not to mention that the dealing of many ounces of coke eases her financial burdens as well.
Although the plot is a bit overfamiliar, Schuster does a fine job in maintaining Audrey’s aura of denial even as she plunges deeper into quicksand of her own making.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-57962-208-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
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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