Another National Book Award seems a distinct possibility.
The collision of the “humanitarian” West with emergent Africa is relentlessly analyzed in this long-awaited second novel from Rush (stories: Whites, 1986; the NBA–winning Mating, 1991).
Rush spent several years in Botswana as a Peace Corps administrator, and his commanding theme is the mystery of Africa as experienced by strangers bent on civilizing it. One such is protagonist Ray Finch, a middle-aged English teacher and covert CIA operative enlisted to write “Lives” of suspicious persons. Ray leads a seemingly idyllic life in the Botswanan town of Gamborene with his beautiful wife Iris, interrupted only by her correspondence with his misfit homosexual brother Rex, a manipulative pseudointellectual who, in Ray’s opinion, “sees himself as . . . the gay Mencken.” More serious complications arise when Ray is reluctant to compile information about British-educated engineer and social reformer Samuel Kerekang (whom the Agency considers dangerous), instead investigating another recent arrival in Gamborene: black American holistic healer Davis Morel, an agnostic and pragmatist determined “to lift the yoke of Christianity from the neck of Africa.” This enormously ambitious tale scorns to summarize or telescope: Rex’s inane effusions and Morel’s criticisms of scripture, for example, are reproduced at exhaustive length—as are Iris and Ray’s (sexy and charming) romantic and sexual banterings. Everything changes irrevocably when Ray is sent northward, through the Kalahari Desert, to observe a violent rebellion by a coalition of Boer and Namibian forces, suffers an imprisonment and unexpected proof of his suspicions about Morel, and ironically becomes at last the man whom he has pretended all along to be. Mortals isn’t easy going, but Rush’s authoritative grasp of his subject, rich characterizations, and complex handling of issues of sexual and political fidelity, morality, and mortality make it a reading experience not to be missed.
Another National Book Award seems a distinct possibility.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-679-40622-0
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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