Tradition and superstition clash with contemporary American culture—with mixed results. After more than 20 years of separation, Chinhominey (Korean for paternal grandmother) visits her son, daughter-in-law, and two grown grandchildren in Los Angeles. Chinhominey’s family has built a typical middle-class American life in the suburbs despite the fateful prophecy that drove the newlyweds from Korea decades ago. Before the Chois” marriage, Chinhominey brought news from a fortune-teller that the two should never wed—that they would experience only unhappiness, and that their second daughter would die young. Seeking an escape from this black prophecy (and from Chinhominey’s constant pessimism), the couple not only married but moved away with high expectations for their young family. But their grand desires were never met, and now, when Chinhominey arrives, she sees secret unhappiness in all four members of her family, unsuspecting that her own long-ago prediction is in part the cause of it. First daughter Christina, foretold as the good offspring, sleepwalks through an abusive relationship with her boyfriend, whose only redeeming feature seems to be his status as a doctor. And second daughter Grace, always scrutinized for the impending mark of self-destruction, overachieves academically to fill the emptiness induced by being second best. Mr. and Mrs. Choi are even less happy, haunted by memories of a hopeful youth filled with love and passion that is now reduced to resentment and expensive appliances. Things hardly improve under grandmother’s watchful gaze, and in fact disintegrate: Christina is confronted with a shattering lie from her fiancÇ, Grace is rejected from Harvard Law, and Mr. Choi contemplates an affair with his assistant at work. Can Chinhominey’s secret—knowledge that is literally killing her’save the family? Apparently it can. A slim first novel that offers interesting insights into the power of a family legacy, though the story itself is sadly much too sketchy and thin to provide the impact that it might have.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-882593-28-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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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