Very slowly, a foggy story emerges from the lyrical reflections of Grace—a young woman who returns to her hometown of East Justice, Iowa, to take care of her dying mother and remains there, ``courting'' memories of childhood—in a thin if well- written first novel. Grace, now in her 30s, spends her days near home, quilting, sewing, cooking, baking, feeding the birds, caring for the elderly in the neighborhood—and inviting the past, as if it ``were a shy animal come to feed silently in the yard.'' In rich, chronological vignettes, this is what she remembers: an idyllic girlhood spent mainly in the company of her adored mother and beloved Russian Jewish grandmother, while her father kept long hours at work, selling farm machinery; and then, after her 13th birthday and a gay bas mitzvah, the sudden, frightening disruption of her safe, sane life when her father abruptly moved out of the house and her mother began to crumble from severe depression. Grace and her older brother and sister were all sent away—the brother to live across town with the father and the father's new girlfriend; the sister to stay with neighbors; and Grace all the way to Minnesota, to board with yuppie-ish and preoccupied but remarkably long-suffering young married cousins. The family never lives together again, and gradually it becomes clear that Grace's task now in reliving the past is to forgive her mother for having cut her adrift at a time when she had been ``bound to [her] like a fish forever on the line, running with, then against the current.'' Once she forgives her mother, she's able to sell the house she grew up in. Not much of a plot, to put it mildly. The pleasure is all in the precise, delicately shaded perceptions of Grace as a young girl.
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-877946-72-9
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
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
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
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