An engaging thriller, even as Carr weaves a perplexing web of conspiracies.
In Carr’s (A Place to Call Home, 2007, etc.) thriller, a family becomes the focus of two warring secret societies.
Wallis Jones, a divorce attorney in Richmond, Va., lives a quiet life with her husband, Norman Weiskopf, also an attorney, and their son, Ned, a 9-year-old genius. Their suburban bliss is interrupted, however, when their family becomes a key component in a war between the world’s two enormously influential secret societies, Management and the Circle. The history and reach of these societies is revealed in waves throughout the novel; ultimately, it becomes clear that these two groups shape every major political and economic situation in the world, and one or the other has been doing so since the late 1700s. Typically, these groups operate in ways that are either entirely covert or seemingly transparent that they appear to be beyond suspicion. However, a series of careless mistakes—and a mole secretly passing key Circle information to Management—leads to violence done to outsiders close to Wallis. The sprawling nature of the conspiracy creates a large cast of characters, many of whom disappear for long stretches of the narrative. Although this can be confusing at times, it allows Carr to illustrate how a range of characters is affected by these warring societies instead of just focusing on Wallis and her family. Nonetheless, the story’s most compelling moments involve Wallis’ family. She’s enlisted for help by a low-level member of the Circle, mostly due to her reputation as a tough, honest lawyer. Understandably, she’s skeptical at first, but as her friends and neighbors begin to die in supposed accidents, she can’t help but get involved. As shocked as Wallis is by the existence of these secret societies, the greater surprise is how close to home the conspiracy lies. So even as Wallis uncovers secrets that reveal the real reasons for global wars and why certain countries were colonized, her more emotional discoveries pertain to herself and her family.
An engaging thriller, even as Carr weaves a perplexing web of conspiracies.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1620304303
Page Count: 450
Publisher: MRC Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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