Competently written, but not at all sure what it wants to be.
Southern belle raises a ruckus.
Keeley Murdock always had the best of everything—and her upcoming wedding to A.J. Jernigan is just going to be peachy. Why, each guest will receive a precious little Limoges box with the names of the bride and groom hand-lettered in genuine 14-karat gold, just for starters. They’ve got to do things right, since it seems like everybody spent a small fortune on her and A.J.—and when the guests get done pawing through the heap of expensive wedding gifts at the Sip ’N See tea, maybe Keeley will calm down a little. Or maybe not. Just what is her best friend and bridesmaid Paige doing with A.J. on the boardroom table at the Oconee Hills Country Club? Why is A.J. hiccupping the way he always does when he has an orgasm? It’s time to burst through that door and have a good old-fashioned—you guessed it—hissy fit. The wedding is off! A.J. decamps, using their honeymoon tickets not long after. Keeley will survive, though this is a mess that even her doting daddy can’t fix. He’s been trying to make her life perfect ever since her mother disappeared 25 years ago. And so has Keeley, an upscale interior decorator who’s awfully particular about details. But her heart’s in the right place. She complains that her latest and richest client, Will Mahoney, owner of the Loving Cup bra company, is trying to export local jobs overseas (she takes his money anyway). By the way, what the hell ever happened to her mama? Did that no-account relative of slutty Paige kill her and put the body down a well? Time to dig a little deeper—in this uneasy mix of chick lit, melodrama, and little-bitty mystery from the author of Savannah Blues (2002).
Competently written, but not at all sure what it wants to be.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-056464-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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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