Intriguing, though the prosaic steals the spotlight from the profound.
A fascinating premise grows muddled in Jones’s semi-sequel to Passing (not reviewed).
Lila Giles returns, now happily married to cardiac surgeon Jack Calloway. Two years of marriage find the couple in a happy routine—a lovely house in Baltimore, two rewarding careers (Lila has an Internet story hour for children), and shared good works: each Saturday Jack and Lila make house calls to Baltimore’s poor and elderly black community. On one such day, when they stop at a convenience store for a bottle of Jack’s beloved Coca-Cola, three white men out front hurl racial epitaphs. The next Saturday, the same thing happens, except that, as Jack is leaving, one of the men clutches his chest, and the other two, having seen Jack before in his scrubs, plead for his help. But Jack walks to the car, a shocked Lila waiting inside, and drives off. Thus Jones propounds the powerful moral question of whether the black doctor should save the racist’s life, and it’s Jack’s implicit answer of no and the subsequent publicity the event garners that turn the wheels of the story. Along the way, though, that story gets derailed—when, instead of focusing on race, Jack and Lila’s marriage takes center stage. Conflicted about the death of the stranger, Lila feels she barely knows the man she married. The daughter of a prominent judge, Lila has lived an affluent and insulated life, far from the mean streets of the racism Jack was raised on. The once-happy couple begin to drift, Jack unable to explain to Lila the limits of forgiveness, Lila increasingly doubtful as to the solidity of their marriage. A subplot about a white woman who befriends Lila provides some diversion, but too many pages are devoted to the ongoing spats between Jack and Lila, skirting the moral question that got the ball rolling.
Intriguing, though the prosaic steals the spotlight from the profound.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-380-81730-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
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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