A pleasure to read. And though the Captain might have other plans, we’d like to know of Eddie’s further adventures.
Tin soldiers and Secretariat comin’: A whip-smart, funny shaggy dog story about dissolute life in the Watergate era.
The setup could be Elmore Leonard by way of a somewhat more mature J.D. Salinger: Messer’s protagonist, who would appear to be more than a little like him, is a veteran of Woodstock who hasn’t been able to handle much since. A college dropout, Eddie Sacks is planning his next move while Nixon is planning his, and with about as much success. Part of his plan is to get out from under the sway of his father, the Captain, with whom Eddie shares an affinity for the racetrack, cigars and a good drink. “One thing about the track,” Eddie tells us early on, “it was the only place I could get along with the Captain.” Indeed, in his Zeus and Cronus moments, Eddie finds himself wishing nothing but the worst for old Pops, whom everyone else loves. The Captain’s got other worries, though, and no end of schemes, the worst of them involving his shlimazel brother, Gene. Everyone, well, almost everyone, loves the Captain until things go awry, when he shows his true colors, grumping of Gene, “One fuck-up after another and I always have to pay for it.” Ah, but isn’t that what families are for? The caper, with its mobsters and mooks and high-concept crime, is a peg on which Messer can hang a lively tale of family feuding and the kind of talking past one another that always takes place when blood kin are involved, it seems, on which he layers an impressive amount of period detail—and detail, period—that’s exactly right, from the way ash falls from a cigar to the champion racehorse Secretariat’s “blanket of daisies” to the sights and sounds of that star-crossed year of our lord 1973.
A pleasure to read. And though the Captain might have other plans, we’d like to know of Eddie’s further adventures.Pub Date: June 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-930589-33-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: BMA Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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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